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BR 125 .V47 1925 
Versteeg, John M. 
Christianity at work 








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hi NOV 121925 
The Abingdon Religious Education oye 

Davis G. Bowney, General Editor S. aGIGAL guy 
WEEK-DAY SCHOOL SERIES GEORGE HERBERT BETTS, Editor 


, 


CHRISTIANITY 
AT WORK 


B jf 
JOHN COCs 





THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 


Copyright, 1925, by 
JOHN M. VERSTEEG 


All rigbts reserved, including that of translation into 
foreign languages, including the Scandinavian 


Printed in the United States of America 


TO 
EDNA AMES VERSTEEG 


It is the lives like the stars, which simply pour down on 
us the calm light of their bright and faithful being, up to 
which we look, and out of which we gather the deepest 
calm and courage. 


—Phuillips Brooks. 


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CONTENTS 


PAGE 
FORW WORD? Ce he a et epithe 7 
PART I 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK ON ITSELF 
CHAPTER 
SOLE VIASTER Je occa Beart eee ey re II 
PARR OE ASE hoe Seana NN ae nae We 19 
EUs PAILURERC clu tiiey del cree 2 ethcciatens 28 
Ve VIR ACHIEVEMENTS ste eh tiene 37 
PART II 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK AGAINST EVILS 
ESATA VEER Yo deteaice 650s Sic! acetals RON eR eRe er 47 
MAE ACRE DY) vets cit hice loyal eee en tN Meare OB ee ke ae, 57 
NN aD RET TOON a eh tts iM Pi aM eee Cg 66 
VISTAS PENOLOGY Sant. Ve Sune yok tis alisha sai 76 
DAY MORIN ALG Wa buipi Al AER ok Rimi et oy 85 
PART III 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK WITH HUMAN 
VALUES 
Dail Te TLDS hi ala c Wh tata tale alan hei auareeeiatas 97 
PU NO NIOMANGL Hoe aU dal a date iaitahe iat 107 
Da Ed PIMCARROOUD. UPR vr eile thd ioabivon sigue 118 
PULLS cy SPR AMIL CONIC. PA AMES coe cs Yas dda’ alte ie 127 
PART IV 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK ON LIVING 
CONDITIONS 
EVO. POVERTY 1 tad ae OIL an 137 


6 CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGS 
SV be A BOR Gs he ov See me Oe Nea, 154 
XVIL) EIRALTH S054) pee Cade ee ae ee 163 

PART V 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK ON CULTURE 

VIL VCHIEIZ ATION SA us pete a earn eames 173 

LOG LITERATURE Cs fh Ste Ca TTC Pp Oe eee ate 181 

Oo. CLARE CARTS. ey ae meetin Gtr ake maa tee 190 

SOUT SCTB NCHS ee oe wea a cee OMT Se 197 
PARTE 

CHRISTIANITY AT WORK FOR LIBERTY 

PULL) DREEDOMGA AF oy Gorn e it alec ok ie esate 209 

AICLITY RELIGIOUSTLABERI Sf thy cine Sa aes 217 

OT), DEMOGRACY.S delaccsnanadi.e temas, gant 227 
oe. Vi CITTERNB HIP 2 21s kleetuiwis SUMP ake alee 237 

PART VII 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK IN THE SOCIAL 
ORDER 
RAV OTE WAROSBIR fists rides thas A er see 247 
DAV CPP RACES hie. ecee gece ce ern ates cte aene 255 
LL RACE OPES I aa RAL eieer uc Acs. ah eam 263 
BALA, TNTERNATIONALISM] alta n +s coe cone 271 
ARM? LEE REALM: OF GOD i), . 2). 4.2 eee 278 
PART VIII 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK IN RELIGION 
ARAL Tee Curistran,Gop .2: 02.373 Rbee eek 2890 
Sake: AIT... fl weaere ed tee a ee ahs 298 


FOREWORD 


HERE is another story of the acts of the apostles! 
What would one not give to have the spiritual insight 
and literary power to produce something akin to the 
New Testament story! Since that cannot be, we may 
at least rejoice that there is a great story to tell. There 
is much more to it than is here set down. To tell it all 
would be a large contract. Only a few have been 
brave enough to set their hands to so huge a task. The 
best of them met only with moderate success. Francis 
H. Stead’s recent effort, The Story of Social Chris- 
tianty, valuable though it is, has too European a view 
to fit those who do their thinking in United States’ 
terms. Moreover, it stresses what has been done rather 
than what is now being achieved. C. Loring Brace 
came nearest the goal in his Gesta Christi, of many 
years ago. And the world has moved since then! 

The writer makes no attempt to recite all the achieve- 
ments of Christianity. Even were he able to do so, he 
would have to forego the pleasure, for this is a book 
to a purpose. It is designed to meet the needs of the 
senior high-school group. Hence some things—such 
as Christianity’s contribution to philosophy—are 
omitted purposely. About all the author does is to 
submit samples to prove the merit of the goods. He 
has sought to guard against bestowing undue praise, 
and has tried to present a fair picture of how Chris- 
tianity has been, and is, at work. 

If the use of one of the shibboleths of the diamond 
may be pardoned, the writer will say that in these 
chapters he has attempted to bunch his hits. The order 


7 


8 FOREWORD 


is not chronological but psychological. The arrange- 
ment attempts to facilitate the work of the teacher, and 
will, it is hoped, yield readily to the grasp and memory 
of the student. 

It will be noted that, in most cases, the endeavor is 
to sketch what has been done and to stress what is being 
done. This, for a twofold reason. First, it behooves 
us to know where things stand to-day. Secondly, we 
seek to enlist the student in the cause of Christ. The 
author frankly confesses himself propagandist. Yet 
he prays that in this, his ardor, he may work no ill 
on truth. 

Tia 


PART I 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK ON ITSELF 


Is there some desert or some pathless sea 

Where thou, good God of angels, wilt send me? 

Some oak for me to rend; some sod, 

Some rock for me to break; 

Some handful of his corn to take 

And scatter far afield, 

Till it, in turn, shall yield 

Its hundredfold 

Of grains of gold 

To feed the waiting children of my God? 

Show me the desert, Father, or the sea. 

Is it thine enterprise? Great God, send me. 
—Edward Everett Hale. 


* The First Settler. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown 
& Co., publishers. 





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CHAPTER I 
THE MASTER 


THERE is this to be said for the Christian Church: 
No other organization has kept so much of the person- 
ality of Jesus before the people. Grant that often he 
was misrepresented by it, that he was caricatured as 
one who was stern and forbidding, that debasing super- 
stitions and dehumanizing practices were sanctioned in 
his name; yet there never was a time in its history when 
the church did not, in some fashion, exalt Jesus Christ. 


THE IMPORTANCE OF JESUS 


The life of Jesus.—The church has always given 
people to understand that Jesus mattered much. In- 
creasing interest in him characterizes the church to-day. 
For a surprisingly long time Christendom gave small 
thought to the life of Jesus. The early leaders of the 
church respected biography, but they could not have 
been expected to relish it. Their scholastic minds took 
to speculation. They were only pleased when they had 
philosophical or metaphysical material to deal with. 

Hence the Epistles of Paul were morsels sweet to 
their taste. From them the church learned to think 
along Pauline ways. Suppose this book attempted to 
discuss predestination, foreknowledge, justification— 
terms that sound far off and weird to us now. But 
this is what was expected in a book if it wished for the 
church’s approval a century ago. 

When Luther lost his love for the Church of Rome 
he did not lose his love for the letters credited to Paul. 
It would have been strange if he had. A phrase from 

II 


12 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


one of them had given him light and leading in his 
spiritual distress. He continued to his death to preach 
and write sermons that dealt with the Pauline Epistles. 
Rarely did he go to the Gospels for a text. 

John Wesley had seen the light while listening to 
the reading of Luther’s preface to one of Paul’s 
letters. Small wonder, then, that he too came to hold 
them in high esteem. He busied himself with those 
sections of the New Testament that lay outside the 
Gospels. 

The rediscovery of Jesus.—Up to a century ago 
the Gospels were largely disregarded. Then a miracle 
happened. An enemy of Christianity brought Christen- 
dom back to Christ. Of course that was furthest from 
his thought, but that is just how it worked out. In 
1835 a young German professor by the name of Strauss 
wrote a Life of Christ. In it he attacked many things 
which the church held dear and which, with more or 
less emphasis, it had taught through the years. The 
book made such a stir that the churchmen were com- 
pelled to answer it. But this they could not do without 
knowing all the facts. So the scholars of the church 
were driven to a new study of the life of Christ. It 
was a turning-point in the life of the church, for now 
the whole church became interested in the way Jesus 
lived. 

This interest has never abated. From that day to 
this a steady procession of “Lives” of Christ has ap- 
peared, and the end is not yet, for the demand to know 
Jesus is growing. Now that we know fairly well what 
his life and teachings were, we are eager to determine 
whether they are practical for the world in which we 
live. We are not content simply to know whether 
Christianity is true; we now wish to know whether it 
will work. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick has voiced 


THE MASTER 13 


this question for us: “There is one thing that does mat- 
ter. There is nothing on earth that begins to matter 
so much. Can Jesus Christ, his faith and principles, 
he made regnant on this earth? Can we get men to 
believe vitally in him and in the truths he represents 
and to join the great crusade to make over this shat- 
tered world upon the basis of his ideals ?’’* 

The study of the life of Christ has immensely sensi- 
tized the conscience of the church. You may put it 
down as a fact that, since the historical study of Jesus 
began, the church has been making history in new and 
astounding ways. When the church recovered Jesus 
it set out to change the world. This is why so many 
of the achievements recorded in this book came to 
their culmination within the past century. This is why 
we believe that, during our century, civilization will 
reach new heights. 


INTIMACY WITH JESUS 


Jesus in history.—The historian Lecky said that 
“the simple record of three short years of Christ’s 
active life has done more to regenerate and soften 
mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and 
all the exhortations of moralists.” But not all of the 
story of Jesus is to be had from the New Testament. 
“This Jesus,’ we read in the Gospels, “goeth on as 
before.” Truer words were never penned. For nine- 
teen centuries now he has made his presence felt. He 
has been the living Lord. You withhold credit due 
Jesus if you fail to take account of all his life and 
spirit have wrought in these centuries. History, it has 
been said, is his story. This is just a quaint way of 
saying what an influence his has been. His church has 
often failed him, as we shall have occasion to see, but 


*The Meaning of Service. The Abingdon Press. 





14 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


the part he has played is impressive beyond words. A 
great light will go up to you once you see why Jesus 
has meant more to the life of this world than has any- 
one else. There is comfort in the thought that he is 
still making history. 

People, therefore, are not only studying his life 
from the Gospels, but they are tracing his historic sig- 
nificance. This means we must take account of the 
years since he left this earth. Christianity is not some- 
thing which has come down to us over the centuries by 
the hand of a dead tradition; it lives and weaves itself 
into the fabric of history; and thus reveals new powers 
and thus leads into new truths. Multitudes of people 
are discovering for themselves that Christianity is a 
movement that is still moving. 

Jesus in experience.—The whole “truth as it is 
in Jesus” is not in the New Testament, although much 
of it is there. And not all that history tells reveals it 
conclusively. Only personal relationship to him is 
able to give us that. Charles Wesley had this in mind 
when he wrote the lines: 


“No man can truly say 
That Jesus is the Lord, 
Until thou take the veil away, 
And breathe the living word.’ 


Christians have the inner experience of the spirit of 
Jesus. 

The Greek notion that knowledge is virtue makes 
trouble for us to this day. There are still those who 
stress right opinion above noble conduct. But the 
truth as it is in Jesus leads men to his way of life. 
Not that Christians have to turn all his words into laws 
and his acts into mandates. Nothing will more surely 
turn religion into a laughingstock than minute copying 


THE MASTER 1s 


of first-century customs in twentieth-century situations. 
Not imitation of Christ’s acts, but the incarnation of 
his spirit is what Christians are concerned about. No 
one can understand Jesus who has not experienced 
him. 

“To as many as received him, to them gave he 
power.” His Spirit has led them. From him they 
have received direction. It has been shown them what 
to do. Hence many a matter on which no word of 
our Lord is recorded has received the attention of his 
followers. They have been “mighty to the casting 
down of strongholds” and effective in furthering the 
reign of God among men. 


DISCIPLESHIP 


The Christian movement.—Christianity has been 
at work in and through the people who had Christ for 
Master—not always, however, as we shall see, with 
equal enthusiasm. Time was when, for all its motion, 
Christianity seemed merely to stand still. Its move- 
ments sometimes came so haltingly that people began 
to suspect that it was dying out. And then, with amaz- 
ing resilience, it came back to life. Nothing has been 
able to destroy it, for always among its people have 
been those who, for Christ’s sake, braved both danger 
and death. None can make a doubt that the church 
that bears his name now has a mind to. work. You 
may find at the close of Matthew’s Gospel the end the 
church to-day seeks: “Make disciples of all nations 

. and teach them to obey.’’ There are other great 
words his people are taking to heart. 


“And I remember still 
The words, and from whence they came, 
Not he that repeateth the name 
But he that doeth the will.” 


16 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


The church checks up with Jesus.—When the 
modern church summons you to its fellowship it comes 
with no claim of perfection. It offers you, among 
other things, the opportunity to help discover the 
deeper meaning of the words of Jesus and the larger 
significance of his life; and it offers you aid in applying 
his teachings and character in personal and social mat- 
ters. It calls you to go forward with Jesus by going 
back to him. Electricity has always been here, but 
only lately have we learned how to make use of it. 
Jesus has been on the stage of events for nineteen 
centuries, and only now are we coming to see what he 
really means. He is beginning to come into his own. 
We are living in the dawn of “the day of Jesus Christ.” 
It is dawning on us that his day is moving-day for hu- 
manity. Hence we unite with the church, not so much 
to be saved, as to save, for the church is a company of 
saviours, who sanctify themselves for others’ sake. 
This is but another way of saying that the church is 
a group of folks whose Master is Jesus Christ. 

The youth movement.—According to one of the 
writers in the New Testament the Founder of Chris- 
tianity told God concerning his followers: “As thou 
hast sent me into the world, so have I sent them.” In 
every generation since he was put to death there have 
been men and women whom this report would fit. The 
interesting thing about this is that virtually all of these 
were young when they began to lead the Christian life. 
Christianity has always been a youth movement. 

Few indeed are those who embrace Christianity in 
middle life. Not only the Founder but most of the 
followers started young. Christianity is sure to re- 
main a youth movement. It comes from One who, 
himself a youth, set great store by youth. For its 
leadership, it will of necessity have to depend upon 


THE MASTER 17 


those who are young enough to train themselves ade- 
quately for it. To no easy venture does Christ call 
youth. It demands vigor, valor, vision. But if it 
demands much, it also gives much. By intimacy with 
Christ people discover within themselves grandeur un- 
suspected before. In personal allegiance to Jesus 
young people come to their best. That is one reason 
why Christianity has always made such a strong appeal 
to young men and young women. The best im youth 
has gone into the service of the best of youth. 

How say you?—Whether this youth movement will 
be your movement depends altogether upon you. You 
will not find it difficult to follow a leader you love. 
What do you know about Christ? How well do you 
know him? What kind of response is he getting from 
you? You must be dull indeed if, after reading of 
the great achievements of the past, and the tasks yet 
awaiting achievement, you do not realize that “‘the 
Master is come and calleth for thee.’ Those who 
respond to that call have for aim the prayer: 


“Saviour and Master, 
These sayings of thine 
Help me to make them 

Doings of mine.” 


For DIscussIon 


1. Which is more important, “the gospel about Jesus” or 
“the gospel of Jesus”? 

2. In what sense do the New Testament Gospels draw 
the same portrait of Jesus? 

3. To what extent is it necessary for us to repeat the 
exact words and imitate the identical acts of Jesus? 

4. Would the career of John Wesley be a good sample 
of the influence of Jesus in history? Can you name 
others ? 


18 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


5. What does it mean that Christianity is a “growing” 
religion? Will it continue to grow? 

6. Indicate the difference between a young man or young 
woman who has Jesus for Master and one who 
has not. 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Glover, T. R., The Jesus of History, Chap. III. 

Versteeg, J. M., Christ and the Problems of Youth, 
Chap. I. 

McAfee, C. B., The Christian Faith and the New Day, 
Chap. I. 


CHAPTER II 
THE TASK 


Tuat Christianity involves a task has not always 
been clear. There are people to-day who regard it 
primarily something done for them. They think of it 
chiefly in the light of one event. “Christ died for us, 
according to the scriptures.” In the presence of this 
event we do well to be reverent. The cross makes 
Christianity the Christian thing it is. “Measure all by 
the cross,” said the famous young preacher, Robert- 
son of Brighton. “Do you want success? ‘The cross 
was failure. Do you want a name? The cross was 
infamy. Is it to be gay and happy that you live? 
The cross is pain and sharpness. Do you live that the 
will of God may be done in you and by you in life and 
death? Then, and only then, the spirit of the cross is 
in you.” The cross was the hardest task the Father 
gave Christ to do. To die rather than break faith 
with the best he knew—what a part to play! We glory 
in his cross. Yet it will not do to say that “the cross 
is Christianity.” Christianity is too eventful to be 
limited to one event. It means something done for us 
in order that something might be done by us. It has a 
memory, but it 1s a movement. 


MISCONCEPTIONS 


Passive ideas of Christianity.—Christianity is 
misrepresented whenever it is pictured as a predom- 
inantly passive affair. Those who describe Christian- 
ity in terms of experience stand in danger of doing 
just this. No person of sense will make light of reli- 


+9 


20 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


gious experience, for this is a fact to be reckoned with. 
Religion is a personal matter; you must have it for 
yourself ; no one can have it for you. Those who expe- 
rience it never tire telling of it. Their one regret is 
that language breaks down whenever they attempt to 
put it into speech: 


“Oh could I tell, ye surely would believe it! 
Oh could I only say what I have seen! 
How should I tell or how can ye receive it, 
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?! 


When Christians recite their experience they are bound 
to voice their feeling about what God has done for 
them. To hear them talk one might think that the dom- 
inant Christian mood is receptivity. But there are 
other moods. Christianity is not simply an experience 
at work; it is an experience in work. In 1738 John 
Wesley’s heart was strangely warmed. That was an 
experience at work. “God then thrust him out 
to raise up a holy people.” That was an expe- 
rience in work. Those who interpret Christian- 
ity in terms of passivity do not deal fairly with it. 
Christianity is not simply a beautiful spirit in which 
to perform our tasks; it gives us a great work to do. 
One-sided activities.—There remains still another 
misconception of which we must rid our minds before 
we can hope to understand Christianity. The religion 
of Jesus is often confused with some form of religious 
activity. Some think that the Christian religion con- 
sists of devotional acts. They confine it to worship. 
It goes without saying that Christians are people who 
worship God. Christ habitually “went apart to pray.” 
But he did more. He hurled his life after his prayer. 


* Collected Poems of F. W. H. Meyers, “Saint Paul,” The Mac- 
millan Company, publishers. Reprinted by permission. 


THE TASK 21 


We must do the same. Our worship does not work 
until it makes us work. 

Nor is Christianity chiefly an intellectual activity. It 
is not something up for endless argument. You cannot 
take it out in talk. Talkative in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s 
Progress could not understand Christian. “I thought 
we should hear a great deal of talk by this time,” said 
he. The news still needs to get out that while Chris- 
tianity makes massive demands on the mind, its activ- 
ities extend beyond this realm. It has more business to 
mind than the business of the mind! 

And Christianity is something more than institu- 
tional activity. The church cannot shut Christianity 
in; it must bring it out. “Christ loved the church and 
gave himself for it.’ We cannot get on without it. 
We ought to strengthen it. But one is not Christian 
just because one helps the church. To perfect the tool 
is, after all, not to perform the task. ‘‘These ought ye 
to have done and not left the others undone.” 


A PLAIN ACCOUNT OF CHRISTIANITY 


The religion of Jesus takes in all of life.-—A 
Scotch writer recently published this pungent pre- 
ventive of any partial view of Christianity: ‘“Chris- 
tianity is not a puzzle to be solved, but a program to be 
adopted ; it is wot a creed to be recited, but a life to be 
lived; it is not a discipline to be undergone, but a dy- 
namic to be experienced; it is not a way of escape from 
the realities of life, but a provision of power for the 
battle of life; it is mot a dull respectability to be en- 
dured but a daring challenge to be accepted.’”’ This 
is but another way of saying what Browning said 
long ago: 

“Religion’s all or nothing, . . .. stuff 

O’ the very stuff, life of life, and self of self.” 


22 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


What is ChristianityPp—It ought to be clear to us 
now just what Christianity is. It is “a wonder- 
ful way of living’—living like Jesus Christ. It is 
a wonderful way of thinking: it is having the mind 
that was also in him. It is a wonderful way of feel- 
ing: it is sharing his sympathies. It is a wonderful 
way of acting: it is doing the will of God whom 
Jesus loved and lived. It is a wonderful way of 
hoping and of imagining: it is looking at the world, 
its past, its present, and future, through the eyes of 
Christ. It is a wonderful way of being: it is being 
in harmony with the Universal Good Will. It is 
not any of these ways as a section of life; it is all 
of these ways at once as a mode of life. It is lov- 
ing the Lord our God with mind, heart, will, and — 
soul. It is the control of life in the spirit of Jesus. 
It is living “the Jesus way.” To live such a life takes 
effort. It means work. Christianity is a religion of 
work because it is religion at work. 

The life of Jesus.—But how did Jesus live? He 
lived by faith in God for the service of men. He be- 
lieved that if men only knew his Father they would 
try to bring all things and all people under his reign. 
“T must work the works of him that sent me.” One 
day in his home town he arose in the synagogue and 
read from Isaiah words which he made his own: 


“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

For he has consecrated me to preach the good news to 
the poor, 

He has sent me to announce to the prisoners their 
release and to the blind the recovery of their sight, 

To set the down-trodden at liberty, 

To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ 


*The New Testament. An American Translation. Edgar J. 
Goodspeed. The University of Chicago Press, publishers. 





THE TASK | 23 


“Whatever religion is not work,’ wrote Carlyle, 
“may go and dwell where it will; with me it shall 
have no harbor.” This is but another way of saying 
what Jesus said and lived. He considered himself 
commissioned of God to be the bringer of enrichment, 
freedom, vision, and opportunity, and to assure the 
unprivileged of God’s interest in them. He told those 
who listened to him: “I came that ye might have life 
and have it more abundantly.” This is what Jesus felt 
himself called of God to do. 

To accomplish this he became a teacher. He claimed 
the right to speak for God. He asserted the validity of 
his mission. Once some people asked him, “‘What 
must we do to carry on God’s work?” He answered, 
“The work God has for you is to believe in the mes- 
senger that he has sent to you.” He taught that God 
can be trusted and that he ought to be loved. He 
taught the value of every person, the importance of 
character, the possibility of growth, the power of love, 
the durability of life. He stated that our main business 
here is the making of a better world. 

But he was more than a teacher. He tried to bring 
to pass the things he taught. He was a helper of life. 
He was no innocent bystander, looking on without 
looking out. He was a participant. He said he was 
here to work. “My Father worketh .. . and I work 
also.” He welcomed workers. He invited laborers 
into his company. “Come unto me, all ye that labor.” 
Henry van Dyke expressed this partiality of Jesus for 
folks who were doing things, when he wrote: 


“This is the gospel of labor; ring it, ye bells of the kirk! 
The lord of Love came down from above to live with 
the men who work.’ | 





* Henry van Dyke, “The Toiling of Felix.” Reprinted by per- 
mission of Charles Scribner’s Son, publishers, 


24 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


Jesus did what he could to improve the condition of 
those he met. “He went about doing good.” He 
created such an impression with his activities that at 
the close of the Gospel of John the writer concludes 
the review of his career by stating, with poetic license: 
“There is much else that Jesus did—so much, that if 
it were written down in detail, I do not suppose the 
world itself could hold the written records.” In read- 
ing this one must remember that Jesus died while still 
comparatively young! 


How CHRISTIANS LIVE 


His followers must be workers.—It is not dif- 
ficult for most of us to believe that Jesus was meant for 
great tasks. But surely for us mortals there are easier 
things to do. ‘When, at the close of his life, Christ was 
talking to his disciples, he looked eagerly into their 
faces as he said to them, ‘‘Greater works than these 
shall ye do.” Jesus had been prevented from doing all 
he wished. People had hindered him. Ina saying that 
sounds like a sob we get a hint of how often people 
thwarted the best of his plans: “How oft would I, but 
ye would not!” We read that in one place he was 
unable to do “many mighty works, because of their 
unbelief.” Even for those who were closest to him he 
had to restrain his message: “I have much more to 
tell you, but you cannot take it in now.” 

Furthermore, he was limited by time, by language, 
by circumstance. It hurt him to the heart that so much 
stood in his way. Then he bethought himself that his 
disciples would be able to carry on the work he was 
compelled to leave. It must have been like a shout of 
triumph when those words fell from his lips: “Greater 
works than these shall ye do.” 

If someone among those to whom first he addressed 


THE TASK 28 


these words had asked him why he was able to make 
such a prophecy, he would probably have replied, 
Greater works than these shall ye do, for ye shall dis- 
cover greater works to do. He did not furnish his 
followers detailed specifications of the work they were 
to do. He knew that if they went forth in his spirit, 
they would be led into truth. New occasions would 
teach them new duties. Not the least of the contribu- 
tions made by Christianity has been this ability to find 
greater works to do. There is always need for ex- 
plorers and always room for more! 

Help wanted !—Nineteen centuries have come out 
of eternity since Jesus said that his followers would 
do greater, if not harder, works. The pages that fol- 
low are given in proof that his words have come true. 
Greater works have been done. The fact that you are 
reading this book is some slight proof that they have. 
It ought to hearten us that his people have wrought so 
well. Of the many who have named his name there 
have been relatively few who have wholly followed 
him. The great majority of them did not do all they 
should or could. All the more significant, then, that 
their achievements have been colossal! What might 
not be done in the earth if more of us took in earnest 
the task he set men to? 

One fact should walk out at us, not simply from 
these pages, but from the book of life, if we have eyes 
to see. While much has been done, much remains to 
be done. When Jesus dwelt among men he had time 
to heal but a few of those who were broken in body. 
For us there remains the task of wiping out diseases. 
He was able to restore but a few afflicted in mind; we 
must banish lunacy, and ignorance must go. He gave 
a few hungry to eat; we must put poverty away. He 
reclaimed, here a thief, there a thug; we must abolish 


- 26 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


crime. He advised just a few not to fear; super- 
stition and suspicion must by us be slain. He coun- 
seled a few to trust love; we must get his counsel ac- 
cepted among the nations of men. He could reach but 
a few with his message; we must sound it everywhere. 
He was the Corner Stone for the realm which it is ours 
to build out of “living stones, fitly joined together.” 
Do you wonder that the spiritually sensitive still hear 
him saying what he said facing Calvary, “As thou 
didst send me, so send I them’? That is it! He is 
sending. Is he sending you? 


For Discussion 


1. Is Christianity an explanation of life or an expectation 
of it? To what extent is it either? Which is it 
more? 

2. Do our creeds express the meaning of the Christianity 
we have been considering? ‘Which express it better, 
our great creeds or our great hymns? Why? 

3. Are you able to think of any New Testament sen- 
tence in which Christianity is accurately described? 

4. We speak of Jesus as the Teacher. Is teaching prac- 
tical work? In what sense is it productive? Can 
you mention an instance in which financial advan- 
tage has resulted from the teachings of Jesus? 
Can you think of some higher advantages, that still 
are practical, which the teachings of Jesus have 
brought? 

5. Does one have to settle the Christian problems before 
he can tackle the Christian projects? When Jesus 
said, ““He that doeth shall know,” did he mean that 
practicing Christianity will help to solve its prob- 
lems? 

6. How can a young person work his Christianity dur- 
ing the years he is getting ready for his life-work? 


THE TASK 27 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Bosworth, E. I., What It Means to Be a Christian, 
Chap. I. 

Fosdick, Harry Emerson, The Meaning of Service, Chap. 
IX. 

Kennedy, Studdert, The Word and the Work. 


CHAPTER Ill 
THE FAILURES 


WE ought to face frankly the charge that Chris- 
tianity has failed. To say that it has failed because 
it has never been tried is not a sufficient reply. A 
religion that has been unable to get itself tried out 
when it has had nineteen centuries in which to do this 
one thing, puts itself under the suspicion that it lacks 
the power to make out a case for itself. What, then, 
shall be said to this charge? 


WHEN CHRISTIANS FAILED TO BE CHRISTIAN 


Reasons for failure-—We shall not get very far 
until we learn to distinguish between Christianity and 
Christendom; between people who had Christ’s spirit 
and peoples who went by his name. Christianity, as 
we have seen, is the religion Jesus lived, the religion to 
which he gave life. Christendom is that portion of the 
world in which the Christian Church has been dom- 
inant. Christianity and Christendom have always been 
related, but during most of the time the relations have 
been strained. It is easy and, in many quarters, popu- 
lar to inveigh against the church. It demands little 
acumen to see that the church has not done all it should 
have done, and that, not infrequently, its actions have 
been remiss. But we shall stay on better terms with 
truth if we bear in mind the reasons why Christendom 
has often parted company with Christ. 

The personal failure.—It will sober our thinking 
if we manage to remember how human Christ’s fol- 

28 


THE FAILURES 29 


lowers were. They had the same trouble we have. 
They always had a time of it to translate opinion into 
obedience. Christ had found it easy to get them to 
say, “Lord, Lord!” But to get them to do what he 
said—there was the rub! He argued with them to the 
last, “If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments.” 
Yet they failed to see his point. One who reads the 
New Testament is surprised to find how many sections 
of it were written to counteract the conduct of these 
early Christians. What bickerings, what jealousies, 
what greed, what scandals, what hates, what indiffer- 
ence! They failed to approximate the character of 
Christ. They were not equal to the vision that he had. 
The best among his first followers strove earnestly to 
make the spiritual supreme in their own lives and in 
the lives of their kinsmen. But that “the kingdoms of 
this world” had to be made “the kingdoms of our 
Lord” did not dawn on them. 

To only a rare soul, like Paul, did this vision come. 
They despised him for it. ... Not a few among 
them believed that Jesus would soon return. No one 
can tell for sure exactly to what extent they were pre- 
vented, by this belief, from trying to better their 
world, but the scanty records of that time indicate un- 
mistakably that it had great influence. When this hope 
grew dim it became the fashion with them to look to 
the life to come for a better state of affairs. 

There was much to foster this faith. Their lives 
were never quite safe. There was no telling when an- 
other persecution might break out. They got the habit 
of thinking in terms of the life beyond. When people 
are busy getting ready for another world they are not 
going to have much enthusiasm for this one. Chris- 
tianity, which to Christ meant better-worldliness, to 
them, and to many since them, meant other-worldli- 


30 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


ness. The New Testament and subsequent records of 
the early church submit proof that the Christian 
Church from the beginning has been imperfect. There 
has never been a time when the perfect church was 
about. If the critics blame us for this, let them make 
the most of it. Just because we are human we have 
to strive for perfection still. 


WHEN THE CHURCH FAILED CHRIST 


The failure of worldliness.—The early Christians 
were unable to “keep themselves unspotted from the 
world.”” They were influenced by the people about 
them and by the age in which they lived. They were 
changed for the worse by people who allied themselves 
with their cause. Large numbers of pagans entered 
the fold. These were believers in magic; they reveled 
in ritual. Pagan ideas succeeded in toning down Chris- 
tian ideals. When they mixed Christianity they missed 
most of it. The early Christians were, for the most 
part, the children of their age. In the letter to the 
Romans came the caution not to be conformed to this 
world, yet most of those who were in Rome did as the 
Romans did. For them, as for us, it was difficult to 
live ahead of the times. To resist public opinion; to 
“follow, hungry and athirst, the lonely exaltation” of 
one’s mind, has never been easy work. But it has 
always been heroic! To it humanity owes such prog- 
ress as it has had. Yet there is no denying these mis- 
takes of the early church. 

Take a bird’s-eye view of church history. First of 
all note that it is church rather than kingdom history. 
Read the New Testament, and then read the writing 
of the church fathers. The Gospels are all the while 
talking of “the Kingdom,” that state of society in 
which God’s will shall be done, but the fathers are 


THE FAILURES 31 


forever writing of “the church.” And this is the truth 
of it. In their ardor for the church they forgot the 
Kingdom. They lost sight of the supreme thing Jesus 
had in mind. They began to think of the Kingdom as 
far off and far away. ‘They identified it with heaven, 
a place to be reached only in the hereafter. 

At first the church was just a small sect of Jews who 
had faith in Jesus Christ. In a few hundred years it 
became a world-power. In the last quarter of the 
third century Diocletian received a monument for 
“having abolished everywhere the superstition of 
Christ.” Before forty more years had passed, Con- 
stantine was presiding over the Council of Nicea, a 
Christian conference. 

Success like this worked the church small good. 
Figuratively and actually, this success went to its head. 
It had endured persecution, but it was unable to stand 
prosperity. It began to settle down to the enjoyment 
and the enlargement of its power. Disputes and 
rivalries developed; in the Church of Jesus not grace 
but place was sought. As it became politically power- 
ful it became spiritually powerless. Then the Dark 
Ages came on. It is only fair to say that there was 
some light in them. For this we have monasticism to 
thank. Scholarship was preserved; the arts were cra- 
dled; political ideas developed; the very power of the 
Papacy prevented nationalism from running wild. And 
always some attention was paid to the inner life. 

iH" He had no truer friends 
Than many of those true servants of the church, 
Fathers and priests who, in their lowlier sphere, 
Moved nearer than her cardinals to the Christ.”! 





* Alfred Noyes, Watchers of the Sky. Reprinted by per- 
mission of Frederick A. Stokes Company, publishers. 


32 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


These aside, the light burned low and continued low. 
The church had stood in with the world; it now stood 
over it. To protect its power it used force. It made 
short work of many noble spirits who attempted to call 
it back and up to its task. It refused to tolerate men 
who dared to think for themselves. It burned Bruno 
at the stake and made Galileo, at seventy, “‘rescind’’ 
the facts he had found. 

But force has a way of falling on its own sword. 
So the Reformation came about. But now the new 
church, instead of being the master over many states, 
became the servant in several. “State churches” de- 
veloped. If a play on words be permitted, the church 
could live in state when it stated precisely what the 
state wished it to state. With the coming of the In- 
dustrial Revolution, which ushered in the era in which 
we find ourselves, and because of which there came to 
be unprecedented concentrations of wealth, the church 
not infrequently chose Mammon above Christ. In 
the Kremlin Palace in Russia there was a chapel with 
the quaint title, “The Church of the Redeemer behind 
the Golden Railing.” This title would fit at least one 
chapter in the history of the church. 

The failure of theology.—One who wishes to ac- 
count for the failure of the church should also give at- 
tention to the astounding damage the theologians 
wrought. It was theirs to make the message of Jesus 
clear to the minds of men. ‘They were the “elect in- 
terpreters’ of Christ to Christendom. The truth as it 
was in Jesus was by them to be handed on. Of all 
men they had the best chance to keep Christianity in 
the way of progress. Yet how woefully they failed! 
They made “the word of God of none effect” through 
their traditions. Much, if not most, that was vital 
in the teachings of Jesus they neglected or obscured. 


THE FAILURES 33 


Of course a deal can be said in mitigation of them. 
They too were influenced by the thought-life of their 
times. The church had its early growth in an era of 
law. What more natural, therefore, than to make out 
God as a Judge holding court, or as a universal Police- 
man whose all-seeing eye no smallest infringement 
escaped? Moreover, to explain their message and to 
make it acceptable, they had to adopt the speech and 
symbols of their day. Not many of them intentionally 
played loose with the message of Christ. Yet with 
every allowance made, the fact remains that Christian- 
ity was wounded in the house of its friends. It is no 
easy task to get beneath their systems to the Christian- 
ity of Christ. 

The failure of institutionalism.—There is yet an- 
other fact to be taken into account. It applies not 
simply to the church but to all institutions. Move- 
ments tend to become establishments. They either 
settle down when they should be on the go, or they con- 
tinue to exist long after the purpose has been accom- 
plished for which they were called into being. 

The church has often been guilty of the first of 
these. We shall have to keep this in mind if we wish 
to explain those occasions when the church should have 
gone into action but sat idly by. And when move- 
ments cease to move, division is sure to come. For the 
better people in them—generally the minorities—will 
get out to get on. When you see into what divisions 
the church has been split, you may lay the blame at the 
doors of theology and of institutionalism. Both of 
these had a hand in it. 


ORGANIZED SAVIOURHOOD 


A repentant church.—If you care to accost anyone 
with the failures of the church, some such outline of 


34 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


them as the one here given ought to come in handy. 
Indeed, were one so minded, it could readily be dark- 
ened a bit. In a conversation with the writer Lyman 
Abbott, a short time before he died, speaking about 
Jesus Christ, said, “I have never béen able to overtake 
him!” All that is best in the church testified similarly. 

But what tugs at its heart still more is the fact that 
many of its members, so far from trying to keep up 
with him, have never seriously attempted to follow him. 
The church is in sackcloth and ashes. One who comes 
within hearing of the modern church finds it confessing 
its sins and lamenting its shortcomings. “Judgment is 
beginning at the house of God.” We have a lot to 
learn from the one who said, “Learn of me.” In this 
case we learn to do by doing. 

The church a necessity.—lf the church could make 
amends by going out of business, the problem would 
not be so severe. But, as a matter of fact, the church 
is compelled to exist. It is a necessity. The building 
of the church was inevitable. Great movements are 
sure to be institutionalized. We organize in every 
realm where we wish to protect, progress, or propagate 
the values we esteem. To be effective we have to insti- 
tutionalize our activities. Christians early realized this. 
Hence the church came to be. Hence the church will 
continue to be. “Whoever says that ‘Christianity is 
one thing and the church another’ has uttered a half 
truth. He has failed, that is, to define his Christianity. 
If he means by Christianity the Christian Idea, inde- 
pendent of its historical setting and operation, he is 
right. But if he means Christianity as we find it. in the 
New Testament and on the broad field of human expe- 
rience and action, he is wrong.’”? 


*Raymond Calkins, The Christian Church in the Modern 
World. Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, 


THE FAILURES 35 


The church is the one organization which has for 
its sole mission the Christianizing of mankind. To 
say this is not to deny that there are other organiza- 
tions which, in one way or another, lend a hand. But 
history abundantly witnesses that much of the work of 
Christianity has been done in the church and most of 
the work has been done through it. The church is in- 
dispensable to Christianity. 

The success of the church.—In spite of the dis- 
heartening failures it has had, there is many a realm 
in which the church has been a success. It has been 
so from the beginning. “It is well to remember that 
historical Christianity has, from the first, been more 
than a private opinion, or a personal conviction, or a 
spiritual ideal. From the beginning it has been a cor- 
porate life, an organized force, a common spiritual 
purpose for definite and practical ends.’’* In the letter 
to the Hebrews you come upon a list of notable achieve- 
ments. When all has been said that is to be said con- 
cerning the faults of the church, it will still be possible 
for us to read that list as the record of the church. It 
“conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained 
promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched the power 
of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness 
won to strength.” 

To the story of these achievements we shall pres- 
ently turn. But first let us note that when Christianity 
called the church into being it did something sublime 
for humanity. Professor Royce said that “the crea- 
tion of the church was the most important event in the 
history of Christianity.”* The building of the church 


*Raymond Calkins, The Christian Church in the Modern 
World. Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company. 

*The Problem of Christianity, by Josiah Royce. The Mac- 
millan Company, publishers. Reprinted by permission. 


36 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


was not only important; it was inevitable. One of the 
outstanding achievements of Christianity has been the 
creation of the church. 


For Discussion 


t. Is it possible now for Christianity to be contaminated 
by other religions? Can it get along with the Bahai, 
or other cults, without injury to itself? Does the 
church to-day compromise with the world? If so, 
where and how? 

2. Consider some of the things the church has learned 
from its failures. Do you know of any failures 
of the church from which it seems not to have 
learned? 

3. Is an institution something more than an instrument? 
Is it also an incarnation? To what extent? 

4. Can a man be a Christian without belonging to the 
church? 

5. Should Protestantism do away with denominations? 
Would such a union guarantee unity? Do you 
think multiplicity of denominations is one of the 
church’s failures? 

6. Suggest some ways in which you might Christianize 
the church to which you belong? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Peabody, Francis G., The Church of the Spirit, Chaps. 
I and Il. 

Foakes-Jackson, F. J., Studies in the Life of the Early 
Church. 

Calkins, Raymond, The Christian Church in the Modern 
W orld, Chap. II. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE ACHIEVEMENTS 


Not a little of the church’s energy has gone into 
the making and defending of creeds. To the person 
who thinks of Christianity as a life of service to be 
lived the historic creeds are sure to be disappointing. 
In the Apostles’ Creed, by which the church sets such 
store—as it justly may—nothing is said about the 
kingdom of God or of our task in the world. The 
Nicene Creed, the Augsburg and Westminster Confes- 
sions, the Thirty-nine or the Twenty-five Articles of 
Religion, make little or no attempt to translate Chris- 
tianity as a trustful task." 


THE CHURCH AS A FIELD 


Keeping men mindful of Jesus.—The service 
these creeds render that entitles them to respect is their 
constant insistence that “God was in Christ.’ This, it 
has been said, is the foremost proposition of the New 
Testament. These creeds keep repeating that Chris- 
tians are people who are able to see God in Christ. We 
see in the life of Jesus the character of God. The New 
Testament reveals that for Jesus God came first. God 
meant most to him. For him the living God was the 
loving God. In the words of James Russell Lowell, 
Christ “took great pleasure in God.” He counted on 


*The Augsburg Confession is basic to the doctrines of the 
Lutheran Church, the Westminster to those of the Presbyterian, 
the Thirty-nine Articles to those of the Protestant Episcopal, 
and the Twenty-five Articles to those of the Methodist. 


37 


38 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


God to see him through in failure and success. He 
felt that behind him and in him was the Divine Ally. 
This is why the church has been sure of the Godlike- 
ness of Christ. 

Making people conscious of God.—Intimacy with 
Christ surprises people with God. He becomes more 
meaningful, more indispensable. When men “see the 
knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ,’ God 
grows on them because he grows in them.’ They grad- 
ually become sure of the Christlikeness of God. 

The consciousness of God was alive in Jesus. He 
strove with might and main to make it alive in others. 
He counseled the people he met to “have faith in God.” 
He was forever calling attention to his heavenly 
Father. Small wonder! For it matters tremendously 
whether people believe in his God. The character of 
God has immense bearing upon human character. Our 
whole outlook on life depends upon our view of the 
Purpose back of life. God was to Christ 


“The Fountain light of all his day, 
The Master light of all his seeing.” 


A school for character.—The church has deemed it 
its duty to follow Christ in this work of pointing out 
the character and significance of God. There are many 
things the church has tried to do, but the best and high- 
est thing to which it has set its hand has been this in- 
troducing of the Christian God to folks. Had the 
church done nothing else, it would have done a great 
deal. Not always with equal consistency has it given 
itself to this task. But, taken the centuries through, 
it has had amazing success in making folks lovers of 


God. 
Because of the Christian Church millions have been 


THE ACHIEVEMENTS 39 


able to say of God, “In him we live and move and 
have our being.” There are some things we can do 
without special spiritual preparation. But to accom- 
plish on earth the will of God we must be spiritually 
equipped. In the graphic phrases of Paul, you must 
“take on God’s armor... with the belt of truth 
around your waist, and put on uprightness as your coat 
of mail, and on your feet put the readiness the good 
news of peace brings. Besides all these, take faith for 
your shield, for with it you will ‘be able to put out all 
the flaming missiles of the evil one, and take salvation 
for your helmet, and for your sword the Spirit, which 
is the voice of God.”* The church has majored in sup- 
plying these inner sources of strength. 

The workshop of the soul.—The church has real- 
ized that to live for God we must live in God. And 
the church has always perceived that living in God is 
work. It is no simple matter to keep the spiritual su- 
preme. There is no easy road to fellowship with God. 
To the lazy, God is hazy. Jesus knew this and accord- 
ingly spent much time in prayer. Moreover, “as his 
custom was,” he attended the synagogue. “To make 
eternal truth be present fact” takes all the aid that wor- 
ship, sermon, and sacrament are able to give. 

The church has given this aid. It has always at- 
tempted to be the teacher of the truth; although it has 
not always had the sense to put the emphasis upon the 
training of the young. It has, however, insisted that 
people ought to avail themselves of the “means of 
grace.” 

The church has always set its members to what 
Gladstone called “the work of worship.” With its 





*The New Testament. An American Translation. Edgar J. 
Goodspeed. The University of Chicago Press, publishers, 
Chicago, IIl. 


40 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


fellowship of faith, “its own composite personality, 
with a collective memory stored with great hymns and 
Bible stories and deeds of heroism, with trained 
zesthetic and moral feelings, and with a collective will 
set on righteousness,’* the church has rendered Her- 
culean service in helping men and women to lead godly 
lives. As Doctor Hough suggests, “Christianity has 
created men of a new quality of good will in the 
world.” 

The church at work on itself.—I{, now, it is the 
task of the church to keep the personality of Jesus 
before people, so that they may see “God in Christ,” 
‘the church itself needs to have “clean hands and a pure 
heart.” The church has often been derelict in this 
respect. Great credit, therefore, should go to those 
who gave their lives to the bettering of the church— 
men like Ignatius Loyola, Martin Luther and John 
Wesley. 

To-day the church is taking this task seriously. The 
records of virtually every recent denominational con- 
ference, the proceedings of the British Copec (The 
Conference on Christian Politics, Economics, and Citi- 
zenship), and those of smaller but similar gatherings 
in the United States, reveal the eagerness of the church 
to increase its efficiency. Such organizations as the 
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America 
and the World Alliance for International Friendship 
through the Churches, exist to bring the spirit of Christ 
into all the relations of life. 


THE CHURCH AS A FORCE 


The church commissioned.—But the church had 
more to do than to keep the Perfect Personality before 





*Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel. 
Reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company. 


THE ACHIEVEMENTS 41 


people. Christ had gone about doing what good he 
could for the reason he stated that day back in Naz- 
areth: “He has sent me.” His followers have had a 
similar feeling. They too have felt that they were 
acting under commission. Had the greatest of them 
been asked, their language would have varied, but 
their testimony would have been the same. They 
would all have united in saying that they were sent of 
God. The red-letter days of the church have been 
those when the sense of its divine commission was most 
clear. 

The church has felt, as did Jesus, ““He has sent me 
to preach.” In order to do this it had to say that Jesus 
mattered. But there was more to tell. Jt had to an- 
nounce, the world over, that life matters. The church 
taught the worth of life. It assured people that indi- 
vidually they are significant to God; that their final 
appeal need not be to public opinion, but to the Opinion 
back of the universe. The church has brought the 
good news of God to the ends of the earth. 

You will also recall that Jesus said that God had sent 
him to improve the condition of those who were in 
need. The church has not always been fully aware 
that it had to follow Jesus in this. Sometimes, as we 
shall see from the pages that follow, almost uncon- 
sciously the church began to see that Christianity meant 
both changed personalities and a changed society. A 
large section of the church is now consciously at work 
to make this world the realm of God. “The evangeliza- 
tion of the world, the Christianizing of international 
relations, the reign of peace, the purification of the 
family, and the upbuilding of Christian character by 
education are the first and the most important tasks of 
the churches to-day. These are not all. There are our 
political life to be purified and our social life to be re- 


42 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


fined, and, above all, our industrial life to be human- 
ized.’’4 


“Not since Christ died upon his lonely cross 
Has time such prospect held of Life’s new birth; 

Not since the world of chaos first was born 
Has man so clearly visaged hope of a new earth.” 


The church universal.—‘‘The world is my parish,” 
said Wesley, and the church now echoes his voice. The 
early church may be described as a holy contagion. It 
spread rapidly. When Constantine came to his throne 
practically all of Asia Minor as we know it to-day was 
yielding allegiance to Christ. By that time it had as- 
sumed large proportions in Syria, Egypt, and Rome, 
in Africa and Spain, and it had invaded the southern 
coast of Gaul. It was preaching its gospel with less 
success in Phceenicia, Arabia, in parts of Mesopotamia, 
in the Balkans and Northern Italy. Such was “‘the ex- 
pulsive power’ of the “new affection.” 

Some of the territory then won has since been lost. 
But the church has gone on to new and. larger con- 
quests. Many a time has it failed to think in terms of 
mankind. One of the darkest blots on the record of 
Protestantism—the darkest, it seems to me—is its fail- 
ure to understand from the first that the world must 
be Christianized. But to-day, with its ministries of 
preaching and teaching and healing, it reaches the ends 
of the earth. Much remains to be done. Christianity 
is facing determined opposition. Mohammedanism 
actively seeks its overthrow. Buddhism, in the guise 
of philanthropy, is striving to reestablish its prestige. 
In not a few places the appeal is made to nationalism 
against this “foreign” religion. Besides, it has to con- 


*The Crisis of the Churches, Leighton Parks, Charles Scrib- 
ner’s Sons, publishers. 


THE ACHIEVEMENTS 43 


tend with paganism at home. But it has heard the call. 
It would not be fit for the Kingdom if it turned back 
now. 

The church courageous.—Christians are less con- 
cerned with being spiritual successes than with the suc- 
cess of the spiritual! They seek first the Kingdom. 
They keep the faith that they are ‘workers together 
with God.” They are constantly listening to the advice 
of Paul: “My beloved brothers, hold your ground, im- 
movable; abound in the work for the Lord at all times, 
for you may be sure that in the Lord your labor is 
never thrown away.” They are conscious of the fact 
that the servant is not above his Lord. “Jesus,” says 
Professor Sperry, “promised his disciples pretty much 
the reverse of all the Old Testament had offered as the 
results of a religious life; instead of long life, the 
prospects of martyrdom; instead of health, hunger and 
nakedness; instead of wealth, the penury of disciple- 
ship.’”® 

Yet the church has furnished, and is furnishing, a 
vast company of people who look the world in the face 
and are able to say with their lips what they more fre- 
quently say with their lives: “The Spirit of the Lord 
is upon me. He has anointed me.’ Perhaps, after all, 
this 1s the church’s main miracle: this constant creation 
of saviours; this building of souls big enough to take 
all the world to their hearts. 

Let us recapitulate. Christianity is a life devoted 
to the task of bringing all men and all things under 
the reign of God. The church is the result of Chris- 
tianity, but Christianity has not always resulted from 
the church. The church has often failed to be Chris- 
tian, but it has never wholly failed Christianity. It 


*Willard L. Sperry, The Discipline of Liberty. Reprinted by 
permission of Yale University Press, publishers. 





44 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


has discovered, and is discovering, “greater works” 
todo. It has kept the personality of Jesus before men. 
It has built character. It has proclaimed to the world 
the worth-whileness of life. It has improved con- 
ditions and is busy now, trying to change society into 
something more like Christ. It makes saviours out 
of its members, who go forth in the confidence that 
the truth of God is in Christ. 


“A little thing, this church? Remove its roots, 
Ossa upon Pelion would not fill the pit.’ 


For Discussion 


1. Would Jesus be more fairly represented if the churches 
rewrote the creeds? Is there any advantage in the 
fact that a creed is historic? Does reciting the 
creed in church help your character? 

2. Should Christians think of God as sitting above the 
heavens on a great white throne? How should they 
think of him? 

3. Should worship comfort people or should it stir them 
to action? Are these two incompatible? 

4. Can the twentieth-century church be the same as the 
first-century church? In what sense would it differ? 

5. How would you go about it to convince a devotee of 
another religion of the superiority of Christianity? 

6. Can a business man serve the Christian cause as truly 
as a clergyman? Would there be any difference? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Versteeg, J. M., The Modern Meaning of Church Mem- 
bership, Chap. IX. 

Peabody, Francis G., The Church of the Spirit, Chaps. 
V and VI. 


*From Barbed Wire and Wayfarers, by Edwin F. Piper. The 
Macmillan Company, publishers. Reprinted by permission. 


PART II 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK AGAINST EVILS 


He whom a dream hath possessed treads the impalpable 
marches ; 
From the dust of the day’s long road he leaps to a 
laughing star, 
And the ruin of worlds that fall he views from eternal 
arches, 
And rides God’s battlefield in a flashing and golden car. 
—Shaemus O’Sheel. 


*From “He Whom a Dream Hath Possessed.” Used by per- 
mission of the author. 





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CHAPTER V 
SLAVERY 


In the section of the book with which this chapter 
begins, we are to note some instances of the improve- 
ments made in the past by Christianity. We are not 
attempting to furnish an exhaustive catalogue of them; 
simply some outstanding cases upon which Christian- 
ity may justly pride itself. 


THE TOLERATION OF SLAVERY 


Its prevalence.—Nobody knows when slavery be- 
gan. It existed before history came to exist. Some- 
where in that distant past, someone made it clear that 
it was a better idea to let war captives live and to use 
them than to kill and eat them. The idea ran like this: 
A prisoner taken in war had forfeited his life. He 
should therefore be grateful for any fate short of 
death to which he might be consigned. To make a 
slave of him seemed a merciful act. As time went on, 
many prisoners were taken in many wars. Slavery 
spread almost everywhere. Among the Far-Eastern 
races there was less of it; but there, in one form or 
another, was the caste system, with its ugly aspects of 
a similar fate. To ancient society slavery was axio- 
matic. Slaves might have the same color and intelli- 
gence as their masters. That did not matter. The 
right of man as man was unheard of. It never oc- 
curred to the masters that to own human beings was 
the acquisitive instinct gone mad. 

The products of slavery.—It is difficult for us, at 
this distance, to imagine the misery slavery caused. It 


47 


48 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


meant the endless degradation of the slaves. Among 
the Romans, up to the time of Hadrian, the master held 
undisputedly the power of life and death. There was 
nothing to protect the slave from the greed, hate, or 
lust of the owner. Slaves were used in gladiatorial 
combats; they ‘were set on each other to fight for their 
lives; the abomination of leg-breaking was inflicted 
upon them; Crassus might with impunity crucify six 
thousand; large numbers might be put to death at one 
time to gratify the whim of some ruler who decided in 
this fashion, to make a display of his grief or to evi- 
dence his power, and there were none to stay him. 
Always some were exceptionally humane with their 
slaves. We know with what magnanimity Marcus 
Aurelius treated his slaves. The Hebrews protected 
them by laws and made provisions whereby they were 
ultimately freed. The Greeks too learned to practice 
moderation. Yet, taken the world over, cruelty ob- 
tained. Under the best of laws, the slaves remained in 
reality at the mercy of their masters. There was al- 
ways the ruthless trampling upon human dignity. “I 
have been good,” boasted the slave, according to the 
Latin poet. “Then,” comes the retort, “you have your 
reward; you will not feed the crows on the cross.” 
Slavery, moreover, meant the degradation of free 
labor. The prevalence and cheapness of slave labor 
put free labor in a sorry plight. At a time when man- 
ual labor was a thing fit only for slaves, work in the 
sweat of one’s brow came into the ill-repute from 
which it has not wholly recovered to this day. Slavery 
paralyzed industry. Finally it involved the degrada- 
tion of the masters. Slave-owning brutalized them; 
it robbed them of the discipline of regular toil; it de- 
humanized them; it made for that master-class atti- 
tude which is still one of the last great bulwarks 


SLAVERY 49 


against democracy. Neither conscience nor consid- 
erateness are in congenial climate when a man is able 
to say what a man once reported to Jesus: “ ‘Come,’ 
and they come; ‘Go,’ and they go.” 

_ Early protests.—About the fourth century B. Cc. 
were heard the first ominous rumblings against the 
institution of slavery. Plato saw no good in it. The 
Stoics protested its rigors, but made no attempt to 
secure its abolition. ‘Live with your slave kindly,” 
said Seneca, who practiced what he preached; “cour- 
teously admit him to conversation, to counsel, and to 
your board. Let some dine with you because they are 
worthy, others that they may be so.” But although 
doubtless some heeded, such counsel for the most part 
fell upon closed ears. They had Aristotle for author- 
ity that its abolition was inconceivable. 

Here and there, outside the Greek world, people 
questioned the wisdom of slavery. The Essenes, a 
quaint monastic sect existing among the Jews at the 
time of Jesus, openly denounced it. But theirs was a 
feeble voice; few gave heed to it. It required a might- 
ier voice before the keepers of the house of slavery 
would begin to tremble. 


THE AMELIORATION OF SLAVERY 


Christ’s attitude.—Yet no one is able to quote a sin- 
gle word which Jesus uttered against slavery as such. 
So far as we know, there was no slavery in Judza at 
the time Jesus lived. The Exile had, in all likelihood, 
put an end to it. For reasons of his own Jesus con- 
fined his mission to “the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel.” He discussed few questions that lay outside 
their realm.. Hence he made no direct reference to 
slavery, nor to many other questions with which the 
minds of men have been distressed. 


50 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


What, then, was Jesus’ contribution? His faith in 
the significance of the individual. His argument in 
favor of the soul proved to be the conclusive argument 
against slavery. To him a human being was of infinite 
value. He believed that it would profit one nothing 
if one gained the whole world but lost one’s soul. He 
came to enrich life, and he made war upon those who 
impoverished it. He could not endure oppression. He 
denounced with withering speech those who exploited 
their fellows. He told his followers that they were 
not to lord it over men; service was to be their dis- 
tinguishing characteristic. He was furthest from the 
notion» that only people of his own race were good 
enough for God. “Many shall come from the east and 
the west and sit down in the kingdom of God.” His 
counsel that men should do to others as they would 
have done to them; his stress on forgiveness and love, 
on sacrifice and service; his devotion to the poor and 
his unfailing sympathy for those who had heavy bur- 
dens, “grievous to be borne,” convinced his followers 
that ‘God is no respecter of persons.” 

The attitude of the early church.—They got the 
feeling that 


“In Christ there is no East or West, 
In him no South or North; 
But one great fellowship of Love 
Throughout the whole wide earth.” 


It took some of them a little time to arrive at this 
view, but it was not long before every Christian be- 
lieved that any man who had the spirit of Jesus was 
every bit a man, whatever his race or the manner of 
his circumstance. ‘‘In Christ,” said Paul, “there is 


* John Oxenham, “In Christ There Is No East or West. Re- 
printed by permission of the Century Company. 


SLAVERY St 


neither bond nor free.’”’ Then why did not he or the 
members of the early church, many of whom were 
slaves themselves, exert their energy to abolish slav- 
ery? The answer is that this probably never occurred 
to them! They accepted existing institutions, as most 
folks have done, without seriously questioning their 
right to exist. Paul looked upon slavery as a part of 
the social order, and the early church followed him in 
this. It put the emphasis upon the inner life. This 
accorded better with their expectancy of the early 
return of the Lord and with their other-worldliness. 
Masters and slaves, when Christian, were brothers in 
the Lord. It took a long time before the church began 
to condemn slavery as an institution. It was probably 
better so. There is no telling what might have hap- 
pened had the church set out at once to abolish slavery. 

Historians incline to the belief that, had the church 
opposed the existing order in such fashion as this, it 
would have been utterly destroyed; not a trace of 
Christianity would have been left in the earth. More- 
over, for the first few centuries of its life the Chris- 
tian Church was in constant danger of persecution. It 
had to fight for its life. It was in no position to remedy 
any such huge social evil as slavery. But if the early 
church did not condemn, it certainly improved. Once 
it gained control in the Roman Empire, an entirely dif- 
ferent attitude was brought about. Gradually, under 
benign legislation, absolute servitude became a thing 
of the past. Give the teachings of Jesus time enough, 
and they will arrive in the minds of men. His oppo- 
sition to oppression and exploitation was bound to have 
fruition in the conviction that the one way to improve 
slavery is to get rid of it. Hence we find Justinian, in 
the sixth century, seeking for means by which he might 
effect its extinction. 


52 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


The recurrence of slavery.—But slavery was not 
to be abolished at one stroke. It had too firm a hold. 
Nor could slaves have been freed until there was a dif- 
ferent form of economic organization. That was long 
in coming, but finally it came. The Christian at- 
tempt to better the slave’s condition was furthered 
by the events of history. When the completion of con- 
quests reduced the supply of slaves, their existence be- 
came of greater value. Now came that higher level, 
about which we think so little, when men were no 
longer born into slavery, but were to the manor born. 
Slaves became serfs. They were attached to estates, 
and the numerous rights given them vastly improved 
their condition. 

All over Europe serfdom prevailed in the Middle 
Ages. And yet slavery continued. The crusades gave 
it new impulse, with Christians enslaving Mohamme- 
dans and Mohammedans enslaving Christians. Yet, 
be it said to their credit, among the Moslems, slavery 
was comparatively mild. Henry the Navigator took 
slaves “in order that they might become Christians.” 
There is no record that Mohammedans also availed 
themselves of slavery as a method of evangelism. 
From the tenth to the fourteenth centuries Rome was 
again the center of a considerable slave trade. Under 
the Saxons it flourished in England, with Bristol as 
the chief market. But although for years some of its 
most prominent citizens carried on the trade, slavery 
never really became popular in England. ‘One may be 
a villein in England, but not a slave,’ Chief Justice 
Holt had ruled in 1702. John Wesley called the slave 
traffic the “execrable sum of all villainies.”’ Mexico, 
Brazil, and Spanish South America had fewer scruples. 
Slaveholding developed extensively in all three. The 
work of the Jesuits in protecting the natives of Para- 


SLAVERY 53 


guay from slavery is one of the noblest chapters in their 
history. 

Traffic in Negroes had been going on for several 
thousands of years. The discovery of America gave 
slavery new impetus. The Spaniard found that the 
Indian could not do his work for him. Consequently, 
he began importing Negroes. Las Casas, a Roman 
Catholic priest, gave this his encouragement, thinking 
thereby to prevent the extinction of the natives. He 
lived to lament his mistake. In England Negroes had 
been sold as early as 1553. Now Englishmen engaged 
in the trade to keep Americans supplied. The Dutch 
had for some time been at it. The same year (1620) 
that the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, a Dutch 
sloop landed the first twenty Negroes as slaves at 
Jamestown, Virginia. The traffic spread until by the 
time of the Civil War it had assumed: gigantic propor- 
tions. 


THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 


The beginnings of the end.—The story of how, in 
one land after another, slavery came to cease need not 
be detailed here. All that was best in the conscience 
of Christendom had been restive about slavery. To 
Denmark, a Protestant country, goes the honor of 
having been the first in Europe to abolish the trade. 
In France “the enthusiasm of humanity” associated 
with the revolutionary movement, rather than any dis- 
tinctly Christian-conviction upon the subject, brought 
about its abolition. But what is “the enthusiasm of 
humanity” but a Christian conviction? And from 
whom did France get it except from the Christ, who, 
for the moment, it had disowned ? 

But the death-knell of slavery was not sounded until 
the English-speaking world rid itself of the institution. 


54 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


The prohibition of the slave-frade and the emancipa- 
tion of the slave in Great Britain and in the United 
States settled the matter for good. It was not a united 
church that, in these countries, fought the good fight. 
In large sections of it proof-texts buttressed by theo- 
logical opinions were quoted to demonstrate that slav- 
ery was the will of God. But the churches that were 
looking at the problem in the light of the life of Christ 
would have none of it. The controversy split the great 
denominations; their reunion is only being effected in 
our day. Among them all, the Quakers presented a 
united front. They gave the subject no rest. They 
never let up on it. 

One cannot hope to call the roll of all who had a 
large part in doing away with slavery. Such names 
as Clarkson and Woolman, Beecher, Phillips, Sumner, 
John Brown, Lady Middleton and Harriet Beecher 
Stowe, of Uncle Tom’s Cabin fame, readily suggest 
themselves. They by no means exhaust the list. What 
we need to note about the glorious company is that 
“it is unquestionable that the principal motive power 
which originated and sustained their efforts was 
Christian principle and feeling.” 

A trio of “Greathearts.”—To appreciate the truth 
of this, one needs but recall the motives of the three 
whose names stand first in the history of this move- 
ment. 

William Wilberforce, with an independent fortune, 
gave up a life of ease for one of relentless activity 
against human slavery, when, on a journey with a 
former teacher, he was converted to Christianity. 
Thereafter, in the name of Christ, he sought to make 
men free. “God Almighty,” he said, “has set before 
us the two great objects, the suppression of the slave 
trade and the reformation of manners.” And the Eng- 


SLAVERY 55 


land in which he had ‘been so hated and so revered, 
responded to his appeal by putting an end to slavery 
just a month after he died. 

William Lloyd Garrison, a poor boy, working his 
own way up, “resolved to go forward, trusting in God 
for success.” He appealed to both churches and peo- 
ple to “bring the power of Christianity to bear against 
the slave-system.” Who that has clean blood in his 
veins does not love those words of his?-—*“I am in 
earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I 
will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard!” 
When he uttered these words he was so poor that he 
had to sleep on the floor of his dingy printshop. What 
did he seem like that day the mob dragged him by a 
rope through the streets of Boston, his clothes in tat- 
ters and his body bruised? Well, we know him now 
for the Christian he was; one supremely concerned for 
justice, willing to pay any cost that it might prevail. 

One need not write at length to convince those fa- 
miliar with United States history what it was that 
moved the soul of Lincoln. He had always had that 
sense of the dignity of life that characterized Christ. 
When the great moment came he reported that “God 
had decided the question in favor of the slaves.’”’ Lin- 
coln had fought it out on his knees. “I made the prom- 
ise to myself and—to my Maker,” and the emancipa- 
tion declaration was issued. ‘The Emancipator” had 
the spirit of Christ. All three of these men based their 
efforts on what they had learned from Christianity 
about the equality of all men before God. 

The persistence of slavery.—We are not all 
through with slavery yet. Only recently the British 
government dispatched a division of destroyers to co- 
operate with the French and Italian navies in curbing 
the slave-trading dhows that ply their nefarious busi- 


56 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


ness between Africa and Arabia. Slavery still exists 
in Abyssinia and ‘continues, more or less clandestinely, 
in parts of the Moslem world. Other and horrible 
forms of slavery exist. Our blood, like Frederick W. 
Robertson’s, “runs to liquid fire’ at thought of peon- 
age and of white slavery. Christians dare not rest 
until these are banished too. But the Christian prin- 
ciple of the worth of human life is established in the 
earth. Never again will the traffic in human beings 
recur on any wholesale scale. 


For Discussion 


Lo 


. Why did protests against slavery begin among the 
Greeks rather than among the Romans? Did the 
idea of democracy in the one, and the practice of 
autocracy in the other, have much to do with it? 

2. The story goes that John Newton wrote his famous 
hymn “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds!” 
while aboard a slaver. How would you account for 
his type of piety? 

3. Did the Roman Catholic Church take an active part 

in the abolition of slavery? (Some one might bring 
in a report on this.) 

4. What is peonage? Has there been any lately in the 
United States ? 

5. Does the Covenant of the League of Nations contain 
any reference to slavery? Can an international 
body like this entirely prohibit it? 

6. Would slavery recur if Mohammedanism rather than 

Christianity came off victorious in the end? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 
Cairnes, J. E., Slave Power. 
Charnwood, Lord, Abraham Lincoln. 
Encyclopedia Britannica, Article, “Slavery.” 


CHAPTER): VI 
CRUELTY 


THE story of cruelty does not make pleasant read- 
ing. Yet one who seeks to know the part Christianity 
has played must go through with it. His reward will 
be the discovery that many forms of cruelty have 
“melted like snow in the glance of the Lord.” 


CRIME AND CRIMINALS 


A quaint idea of crime.—Crimes have varied with 
times and places, as have punishments. But crime has 
long been understood to consist of those acts or omis- 
sions “in respect of which punishment may be inflicted 
on the person who ts in default whether by acting or 
omitting to act.” Thus viewed, crime usually means 
some injury done an individual by which the general 
well-being is attacked. But for the greater part of 
the Christian era not only wrong conduct but wrong 
belief was accounted a crime. One who had, or ven- 
tured to voice, opinions contrary to those of the church, 
was in for punishment and for a lot of it. Men 
thought that a heretic was even worse than a criminal. 
You could call him a criminal only if you italicized 
the word and underscored it beside. 

The conflict with crime.— Until recently the theory 
was virtually universal that extreme penalties are the 
best deterrents of crime. This theory was put into 
practice with appalling zest. Upon but slight provoca- 
tion people were tortured or thrown into prison; upon 
but little more they were hanged, or burned at the 


37 


58 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


stake, or boiled alive, or broken on the wheel, or dis- 
membered—not to exhaust the list. In 1801 white 
slaves (men, this means, who were in slavery for debt) 
were driven through the streets of Philadelphia, with 
iron collars and chains about their necks. About the 
same time in little Delaware twenty crimes were pun- 
ishable with hanging. Crimes punishable with death 
were often offenses we now consider minor. The fol- 
lowing incident, culled from the Reminiscences of Sir 
Henry Hawkins, goes to illustrate this: “Standing at 
a window I saw, emerging from a by-street that led 
from Bedford jail, a common farm-cart, drawn by a 
horse which was led by a laboring man. As I was 
above it, I could see too from the pallid faces of the 
crowd that there was something sad about it all. The 
horse moved at a snail’s pace, while behind walked a 
poor, sad couple with their heads bowed down, and 
each with a hand on the tailboard of the cart. They 
were evidently overwhelmed with grief. I learned a 
little later that the cart contained the body of their only 
son, a youth of seventeen, hanged that morning for 
setting fire to a stack of corn.” 

The attitude toward the criminal.—tIn keeping 
with the theory that extreme physical penalties might 
be counted on to deter crime, it was felt that the proper 
attitude toward criminals was hate. Sir James Stephen 
pronounced this dictum: “I think it highly desirable 
that criminals should be hated; that the punishment 
inflicted upon them should be so contrived as to give 
expression of the hatred, and to satisfy it.” No con- 
sideration was to be shown them. The old-time war- 
den put it brusquely: “These men are sent to us to be 
punished, and it is our duty to punish them good and 
plenty.” Little was to be done for them; everything 
harsh to them. 


CRUELTY 59 


The retributive theory of punishment.—Retribu- 
tive justice they called it, and never perceived the con- 
tradiction involved in this phrase. And the church 
upheld them in it, especially when it came to the treat- 
ment of heretics. It taught that no punishment known 
could fit quite so heinous a crime as to disbelieve the 
church. With no uncertain sound the church let it be 
known that people were to go its way or would be put 
out of the way. Not that the church itself would do 
anything like that! It simply handed you over to “the 
secular arm’’; that attended to the rest. If you care 
to know how it worked, read what the Duke of Alva 
did in the time of Philip the Second. 


TORTUOUS THEORIES OF EVIDENCE 


A reversion.—In the matter of obtaining evidence 
as to whether or not people were guilty of these crimes 
there is an even stranger tale to tell. The Greek jurists 
who adhered to the Stoical philosophy were sticklers 
for fairness when it came to evidence. They viewed 
with horror the idea of condemning a man unheard. 
They held to the theory, acknowledged as sound every- 
where now, that the defendant is acquitted if the ac- 
cuser does not prove his case. This, you notice, puts 
the burden of proof upon the accuser. But in Europe, 
for nearly a thousand years, the burden of proof was 
thrown upon the accused! Nor could the accused give 
such proof as to-day is accepted in any court of law. 
No; numberless superstitious customs and conditions 
were prescribed for him; beyond these it was not his 
to go. How was it possible for people so to backslide 
from the Greeks? 

The wager of battle.—The answer brings us around 
to superstition. Tacitus said that the early tribes be- 


60 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


lieved “God especially present with those in battle.’”? 
You remember the story of David and Goliath. A 
courageous warrior was selected by one side to contend 
with one from the other, and the result of the conflict 
convinced both of the armies which side God was on. 
But however it roots back, this superstitious theory 
resulted in the use of the single combat as the test 
of truth. Note: this was not a duel, although it was 
doubtless the parent of the duel. To quote a quaint 
old sentence, ‘‘The battle of two men sufficeth to de- 
clare the truth, so that victory is holden for the truth.’ 
It seems unbelievable now that there should ever have 
been a time when the personal battle could decide cases 
of law. It seems even less credible that some of the 
colonists deemed it a real grievance against England 
that they were being deprived, by English legislation, 
of the right of wager of battle in criminal cases. A 
litigant finding that his case was going against him, 
could accuse a witness of perjury, challenge him to 
combat, and so fight it out. All of which had a hu- 
morous side. Instances are vouched for where the 
right was extended to challenge the court. A man 
whose case was defeated in court might be seen fight- 
ing it out with the judge who had decided against him! 
The wager of battle was not totally abolished in Eng- 
land until 1819. But there is a sobering side to all 
this, when one begins to compare the theory of the 
wager of battle with the theory of war. Is there much 
difference after all? 

Ordeal.—Another way of determining one’s guilt 
or innocence was by means of an ordeal. The ordeal, it 
was believed, provided a miraculous decision as to the 


*Reprinted from Gesta Christe, by C. Loring Brace, by per- 
mission of the publishers. 
* Ibid., George H. Doran Company. 


CRUELTY 61 


truth of an accusation or a claim. This belief also 
roots far back. Among ancient Babylonians, Greeks, 
Hebrews, as among the medieval Christians, ordeals 
were in use. The taking of poison, contact with red- 
hot iron or boiling water, or ability to swallow a con- 
secrated portion of food—these were some of the 
ordeals employed. Divine intervention was counted 
upon to save the accused from harm, if innocent. 
Most of the ordeals were of such a character that, un- 
less one was able to practice illusion, conviction was 
practically certain. 

Torture.—Along with the tragic notion that the 
right was revealed through a fight or that guilt or inno- 
cence could be established through an ordeal, came the 
idea that truth could be elicited through torture. As an 
example of the refinement to which torture developed, 
the case of Doctor Fian, of Edinburgh, in 1591, is 
quoted by Doctor Cutten. “When the rack proved in- 
effectual, the boots were tried, and during this he 
fainted from pain. Later his fingernails were riven 
out with pincers, and long needles thrust their entire 
length into the quick. Again he was consigned to the 
boots and kept there ‘so long, and abode so many 
blows in them that his legs were crushed and beaten 
together as small as might be, and the bones and flesh 
so bruised that the blood and marrow spouted forth 
in great abundance.’ ’’? Motley, in his Dutch Republic, 
gives this gruesome picture of it: “The torture took 
place at midnight, in a gloomy dungeon, dimly lighted 
with torches. The victim—whether man, matron, or 
tender virgin—was strapped naked and stretched upon 
the wooden bench. Water, weights, fires, pulleys, 


* Reprinted from The Psychological Phenomena of Christian- 
ity, George B. Cutten, by permission of the publishers, Charles 
Scribner’s Sons. 


62 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


screws—all the appliances by which the sinews could 
be strained without cracking, the bones crushed with- 
out breaking, and the body racked exquisitely without 
giving up its ghost, were now put into operation. The 
imagination sickens when striving to keep pace with 
their dreadful realities.”’ 


Tue BETTER Way 


The Christianizing of the means of evidence.— 
It will need a chapter by itself to give a fair idea of the 
change that has come over men in their view of crime. 
Let us here content ourselves with pointing out why 
the ancient methods are no longer used. 

“Religion,” as Doctor Betts has said, “is a part of an 
integral life process and a vital function operating con- 
jointly with other factors in human experience.”* It 
is, therefore, quite impossible to separate the religious 
influence from other influences in the doing away of 
the whole ilk of ghastly methods once used to obtain 
evidence. We know that the revival of interest in 
Roman and Grecian law had much to do with it. On 
the other hand, this revival itself was influenced very 
largely by the lawyers of the church who were, for 
the most part, also its priests. 

There is plenty of proof, moreover, that always in 
the church voices were lifted against the barbarism of 
the wager of battle and against ordeals. Let a few 
examples suffice. The first code in which the wager 
of battle was definitely forbidden was enacted by the 
Norsemen of Iceland, at just about the time Christian- 
ity was introduced among them. Saint Abogard, 
Archbishop of Lyons, wrote the emperor in the year 
826: “The faithful mind must not suppose that Al- 


*The Curriculum of Religious Education. The Abingdon 
Press. 


CRUELTY 63 


mighty God desires to reveal the secret things of many 
by hot water or hot iron, or by cruel battle.”® From 
about this time onward, Popes and many civic rulers 
sought to discourage these methods of obtaining evi- 
dence. Yet they persisted. It takes a long time to 
cast out those habits of thought and of action that 
have their root in the fiercer passions of man. But 
the leaven was working. At the end of the sixteenth 
century Sir Thomas Smith wrote of the judgment by 
battle: “This, at this time is not much used, partly 
because of long time the Pope and the clergy, to whom 
in past time ‘we were much subject, always cryed 
against it as a thing damnable and unlawful.”® And, 
to quote this picturesque writer again: “The men of 
the church who of long time have had dominion in our 
consciences, and would bring things to a more mod- 
eration, have much detested this kind of trial and 
judgment.”* 

The appeal to violence departs.—As_ people be- 
came familiar, through the reading of their own 
Bibles, with the teachings of the New Testament, there 
gradually dawned on them something of Jesus’ view 
of life. In various ways they reached the conviction 
that “love is the fulfilling of the law.” This convic- 
tion naturally made its way into legislation. Methods 
of torture, therefore, had to go by the board. Nor 
could the mode of punishing heretics survive in the 
light of it. Men came to see that one cannot kill ideas 
by killing men. There is a sort of immortality about 
them that neither thumb-screw, rack, nor flame can 
successfully counteract. 

Of course the world is not wholly rid of violence, 


* Reprinted from Gesta Christi, by C. Loring Brace, by per- 
mission of the publishers, George H. Doran Company. 
* Ibid. * Ibid. 


64 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


as lynchings, riots, and war amply demonstrate. But 
ever since the life of Jesus has come to the front a 
change of climate has come over all the realm of our 
thought. Instead of the retributive theory of pun- 
ishment, the reformative has come. Instead of resort 
to violence, persuasion is being used. ‘The basis of 
hate is departing in favor of the basis of love. Once 
the world became convinced of the value of the soul, 
and of the power of that Saviour whose name was 
called Jesus just because “‘he saves men from their 
sins”; once his compassion for the unprivileged and 
unfortunate became clear, there was no living longer 
with the notions of hate and of force. It used to be 
said in the olden days, “You must give criminals all 
that is coming to them.” To-day we say the same 
thing, but now it has a different meaning. For, of all 
that is coming to them, nothing is more their due than 
understanding and sympathy, and, where it is possible, 
reclamation to the better life. 


For Discussion 


i. Is it enough for churches to conduct religious services 
in jails? That should be the nature of them? Is 
there anything they could do besides? 

2. If you were warden of a prison, what would you do 
for your prisoners? 

3. Name some undesirable beliefs. Do they influence 
conduct? How would you go about it to change 
them for the better? 

4. Is physical punishment always wrong? To what 
extent is force justified in the treatment of crimi- 
nals? Should capital punishment be abolished 
everywhere? 

5. Have you ever heard of the “third-degree” in police 
work? (Some member of the class might look up 
this matter and report.) 


CRUELTY 6s 


6. Can you suggest any ways in which the activities of 
the police and the courts might be Christianized? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Bower, L. F., The Economic Waste of Sin, Chap. I. 
Langdale, J. W., Citizenship and Moral Reform, Chap. 
VI. 


Diefendorf, D. F., The Christian in Social Relationship, 
Chap. VIII. 


CHAPTER VII 
SUPERSTITION 


It is sobering to reflect that mankind has been longer 
in the grip of superstition than it has been out of it. 
To-day, when people dread walking under ladders, or 
have a care not to number thirteen, or knock wood, 
or carry rabbits’ feet, we call that superstition. Yet 
these give scarcely an inkling of the hold superstition 
once had upon people’s lives. Christianity had its rise 
among people who had a lot of it, and it spread among 
people who had even more. 


BELIEF IN MALIGNANT POWERS 


Demoniacal possession,—The belief that people 
could be possessed of demons existed quite generally 
in the ancient civilizations. Originally, the distinction 
between the divine and the demon was not always rig- 
idly made. But gradually the term “demon” came to 
stand for an evil spirit. The belief became prevalent 
that demons were the emissaries of the devil, who was 
lord of them all. For us the world to-day is full of 
destructive and dangerous bacilli. For most people, 
throughout centuries, the world was full of evil 
spirits, who had power to take up their abode in men. 
They believed that demons were able so to enter a 
person as to control him completely. This was called 
demoniacal possession. For centuries this belief went 
virtually unchallenged; until relatively recently it per- 
sisted throughout Christendom. 

Exorcism.— The early Christians did not surrender 

66 


SUPERSTITION 67 


their belief in demons, but they felt themselves pos- 
sessed of power to overcome them. They deemed it 
part of their calling to cast out demons, which they did 
in the name of Jesus. In their attacks upon evil spir- 
its they often dealt mighty blows to the spirit of evil. 
Yet their very ardor against demons tended to increase 
their belief in them. Add to this the church’s contact 
with pagan cultures, and it will not be difficult to see 
why certain formulas, many of them magical, began 
to grow up. As time went on the use of these formu- 
las became confined to the priests. So it comes that, 
to this day, one who is ordained to the Roman Catho- 
lic priesthood is commissioned, among other items, 
as an exorcist. When Protestantism came into being 
exorcism became a subject of disrepute. Luther and 
Melanchthon favored it; Zwingli and Calvin set them- 
selves resolutely against it. 

The insane and epileptic.—It is the practical dam- 
age done by this belief with which we are here con- 
cerned. Insanity and epilepsy were attributed to this 
source. The insane were not sick; they had devils! 
“He hath a demon,” came to be the explanation of a 
man whose mind was diseased. You can imagine what 
type of treatment this belief resulted in. To be sure, 
provisions for these unfortunates were made at a few 
shrines. Yet, even at these, the treatment was not quite 
considerate. At one of them—Saint Nun’s—the pa- 
tient was plunged backward into the water and then 
dragged to and fro until his mental excitement ceased. 
The theory was that the demons possessing these per- 
sons deserved no gentle treatment. If they would not 
be exorcised, you had best chain them down or re- 
lentlessly torture them! 

Of course there were vast numbers of the insane 
who never got to a shrine. They lived wild, haunted 


68 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


lives and wandered aimlessly. In some sections it 
was part of the duty of the public executioners to ex- 
pel from the towns, by flogging, any lunatics who en- 
tered their streets. We have it on the authority of a 
noble physician who worked among them in the first 
part of the nineteenth century that these unfortunate 
people were “treated worse than criminals, reduced to 
a condition worse than that of animals. I have seen 
them naked, covered with rags, and having only straw 
to protect themselves against the cold moisture and the 
hard stones they lie upon, deprived of air, of water 
to quench thirst, and all the necessaries of life, given 
up to mere gaolers and left to their surveillance. 1 
have seen them in their narrow and filthy cells with- 
out light and air, fastened with chains in these dens in 
which one would not keep wild beasts. This I have 
seen in France, and the insane are everywhere in 
Europe treated in the same way.” 

“Bedlam broke loose.’’—This saying harks back to 
“Bedlam,” an institution originally founded as a 
priory, but into which, after a time, lunatics were re- 
ceived. It was rebuilt as an asylum for the insane in 
1676.. The methods employed there, and the con- 
ditions that prevailed, earned for this institution a most 
unsavory reputation. Bedlam is a fair illustration of 
the little care given at best to the diseased in mind 
during most of the years that Christianity has been 
in the earth, 

A servant of humanity—No great advance in the 
humane and scientific care of the insane was made 
until the last seventy-five years. But a man who died 
about a century ago did most to bring it about. Phil- 
lippe Pinel, a French surgeon, was a happy combina- 
tion of scientist and propagandist. He suggested 
moral remedies for the insane and was the father of 


SUPERSTITION 69 


modern psychiatry. But this is not all. He made an 
issue of it. He called upon people to awake to the 
enormity of the injustice perpetrated upon this 
wretched and suffering class. He did more than any 
other man to introduce the humane treatment of the 
insane. He was one God inspired. He lived his life 
in devotion to Christ. Once interest had been aroused, 
other Christians took up the work. Lord Shaftesbury 
in 1828 publicly advocated better treatment of them 
and from that day to this, all over the civilized world, 
humane laws have been enacted to protect the men- 
tally defective. Such a change has been wrought by 
this time in our thought and treatment of the insane 
that we find it hard to believe the conditions that ex- 
isted a hundred years ago. Now, on the basis of scien- 
tifically determined degrees of insanity, and increas- 
ingly in the spirit of Jesus, specialized treatment is 
accorded those who suffer in this way. As we look 
back at the past, we feel that not insanity, but man’s 
treatment of it, was demoniac. 


THE BELIEF IN MALIGNANT PURPOSES 


Partners of the devil.—A lunatic was an ordinary 
person possessed of an evil spirit. But a witch was an 
evil person, in league with an evil spirit. A witch was 
supposed to have entered voluntarily into partnership 
with the devil to control a demon and use it for ma- 
lignant purposes. Witches were said to have signed 
the agreement with their own blood in Satan’s book. 
It was thought that they communed with the devil in 
the celebration of Black Mass. All sorts of weird, 
supernatural tricks might be done by them, They were 
supposed to be able to transform themselves into ani- 
mals, to kill and eat children, to ride broomsticks 
through the air at night, to visit all sorts of torment 


70 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


upon innocent people. By virtue of their agreement 
with the devil, they were thought especially to have 
it in for the people of God. One who was “old and 
woman and alone” stood good chances of being seized 
as a witch upon some bit of fantastic evidence. 

A mischief-making text.—“Thou shalt not suffer a 
witch to live,” people read in their Bibles. This had 
a twofold result. First, it was offered in proof of 
the reality of witchcraft. This was buttressed by the 
biblical story of the witch of Endor and similar refer- 
ences. This is the reason why the Reformation had 
so little immediate effect upon this belief. Luther and 
Wesley both expressed implicit faith in it. The latter 
opined that “the giving up of witchcraft is the giving 
up of the Bible.” In the second place, this text pre- 
scribed the one type of punishment to be visited upon 
those who were guilty of it: they had to be put to death. 
And with pathetic zeal people proceeded to carry out 
the mandate the text expressed. 

Persecution of the witches.—Those accused of 
witchcraft were in for a rough time. One of the surest 
ways of determining guilt was the finding of witch- 
spots. We understand now what these are. We know 
how people suffering from hysteria are often insensi- 
tive to pain in certain parts of the body, but this knowl- 
edge has only come recently. In witchcraft days peo- 
ple saw in these spots tokens of the devil’s power. 
Armed with long needles, officials would hunt up the 
accused. If any spots on their bodies proved painless 
when the needles were run in, that was all the evidence 
needed to prove their guilt. There were other methods. 
Once upon a time a man by the name of Matthew Hop- 
kins was the “Witchfinder-General” in England. He 
would tie the right thumb of the suspect to the great 
toe of the left foot, and the left thumb to the great toe 


SUPERSTITION 71 


of the right foot. Then the victim was wrapped in a 
heavy blanket and placed in a river or pond. If she 
sank and was drowned, she was innocent; if she floated, 
she was guilty, taken out and burned alive! What 
wonder that many witches (not a few of whom had 
actually come to believe that they were what they were 
charged to be) preferred suicide to trial. Some his- 
torians are of the opinion that from the fifteenth to the 
seventeenth century millions were tortured and put to 
death on a charge of witchcraft. Others think the 
total less, but all are agreed that an appalling number of 
people fell victim to this belief. Even young children 
and dogs were not spared. The more vicious the treat- 
ment of witches, the more virtuous it was deemed. 
The strange case of Salem.—In our country witch- 
craft had its innings toward the close of the seventeenth 
century. Some young girls had been instructed in 
palmistry and magic by the West Indian slave of the 
pastor of the Salem village church. Subsequently they 
accused this slave and two old women of bewitching 
them. The excitement ran high; others were accused, 
and within a few months hundreds had been arrested 
and a number hanged. In Boston, Cotton Mather, 
ministering at the time to the largest congregation in 
New England, used voice and pen to affirm his belief 
in witchcraft and his conviction that those guilty of it 
should be done to death. Thus came about the orgy 
of witch killing which makes such pathetic reading in 
our history. One phase peculiar to this situation was 
that some were put to death, not for practicing witch- 
craft, but for denying belief in it! Before long, how- 
ever, a decided reaction set in. Increase Mather’s hint 
that the accusers, and not the accused, were the real 
victims of Satan, turned the tables so neatly that the 
appetite for the whole witch-business was speedily lost. 


72 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


THe DESTRUCTION OF MALIGNANT BELIEFS 


We have seen what unspeakable cruelty resulted 

from these two superstitions—belief in demoniacal pos- 
session and belief in witchcraft. In the chapters that 
follow we shall encounter still more cruelty. What we 
should particularly note at this juncture is not by what 
legislation or methods this cruelty was ended, but why 
these superstitions finally died out. 
« The power of Jesus.—If you read carefully, you 
will see how in the New Testament the axe is laid at 
the root of the belief in demons. True, the writers 
themselves were the children of their age; they be- 
lieved in demons and in demoniacal possession. But 
they stated a principle that was ultimately to prove the 
undoing of superstition. That principle was their 
faith in the power of Jesus Christ. Believers came to 
feel that demons did not matter when Jesus was about. 
Paul had the feeling that they were “coming to 
naught.” That feeling spread. If “God was in Christ 
reconciling the world unto himself,” life could be 
trusted. By setting men free from fear, Jesus drove 
out superstition. 

“But,” you may say, “‘see how very slow superstition 
was in going.” Yes, but remember how deep-seated 
was the belief in demons. Moreover, up to the era of 
modern science no other explanation was at hand for 
many of the puzzling facts for which we now account 
in other ways. The belief was not wiped out, it was 
driven out. It was a long and drawn-out process, slow 
but sure. At first, but occasionally, some thinker per- 
ceived the significance of Jesus to this belief and re- 
marked upon it. So Tatian, in the Second century, 
expressed the belief that “Christ sets men free from 
ten thousand tyrants,” and gloried in the fact that 


SUPERSTITION 73 


“instead of demons that deceive we have learned one 
Master who deceiveth not.” With the years others 
found this new freedom by faith in Jesus Christ. 
It needed but the modern emphasis on the teachings 
and life of Jesus to put an end to the fear of demons. 

Self-protection.—There were other reasons for the 
breakdown of these superstitions, complementary if 
not similar. One of these was that no one was really 
safe who lived where these superstitions existed. In 
an atmosphere of suspicion and suggestibility there 
was no telling who would be the next victim. Once 
this point became clear, the jurists threw all the weight 
of their influence against it. In this they found ready 
allies in many legislators and preachers. 

The development of science.—Later on in this 
book we shall trace Christianity’s relationship to sci- 
ence. We shall then see that Jesus set the mind free. 
Just now we need but remind ourselves that there were 
always those who had what Huxley called ‘“‘a passion 
for veracity.” The world is in massive debt to such 
minds as these. Witchcraft killed itself by its own 
excesses, but the superstition back of it was killed by 
men who, convinced of the goodness at the Heart of 
the universe, patiently studied natural law and the 
laws of human nature. Once the discovery was made 
that not Satan, but sickness, lay back of insanity, the 
world began to turn about face in its treatment of it. 

The contribution of the Reformation.—The Ref- 
ormation had much to do with the development of 
science and its resultant “casting out of fear.” It 
must not be forgotten that the Reformation was a 
movement within Christianity, and, indeed, within the 
church. A well-informed writer well says: ““Men were 
not free to follow investigations in nature or history 
while the medieval church controlled the universities. 


74 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


All thought was measured by the standards of the 
medieval dogma and world outlook. . . . The tram- 
mels which hindered thought would never have been 
broken without the new religious freedom. This made 
possible modern progress in all departments. When 
the mind was also freed through the freedom of the 
soul it could search justly and investigate honestly. 
The fact that now men can and dare think for them- 
selves is an outcome of religious freedom which broke 
the bondage of the medieval church over men’s minds.’”? 
In other words, the Reformation created a congenial 
climate in which science could live and grow. You 
must take account of this if you wish to be fair to all 
the facts that of right should be considered in con- 
nection with the overthrow of superstition. 

What Christian convictions wrought.—The Ref- 
ormation had also sounded a new note of self-esteem. 
“The priesthood of believers’ was something more 
than a doctrine. It was the self-assertion of men who 
knew themselves souls. They felt that the resources 
of God were within their reach. They believed that, 
in men, no devil could hope to prevail over God. Their 
trust in God dispelled all fear of what demon or witch 
could do. Devils there might be; but they were sure 
to move out when God came into the soul. Out of 
such a conviction as this God came to speak in the 
hymn: 

“The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose, 
I will not, I will not desert to his foes; 


That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, 
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake!” 


The word became flesh.—Their confidence in God 
was enriched by the spirit of Jesus. The Reformation 





*). W. A. Haas in The Lutheran. Reprinted by permission. 


SUPERSTITION 70 


had also spread the Bible broadcast. Every one read in 
his own tongue what the Book had to say. Those who 
read it for themselves could not help but notice the com- 
passion Jesus had shown for the lunatics and those 
who in his day were accounted demon-possessed. 
Christ had practiced no cruelty upon them; he had 
never brought them to trial; he had invariably brought 
them the love of God. To sum it all up, the spirit of 
truth and the spirit of love destroyed the superstitions 
we have been speaking of. When one has these two 
one lacks very little of Christianity. The confidence 
Jesus had in God and the love he had for man, by 
means of their contagion, have slain many superstitions 
and shall yet smite many more. This, then, is the sig- 
nificant thing: not that the insane are treated better or 
that witches are unheard of now, but that these super- 
stitions can never again arise. They are dead beyond 
all hope of resurrection. The spirit of Jesus has too 
great a hold on men’s lives for them ever to recur. 


For DIscussION 


1. Can we have a Christian world so long as insanity 
is in it? 

2. Have any of the teachings or methods of the church 
fostered insanity ? 

3. Do any superstitions remain that still vitally affect 
humanity? If so, name some. 

4. Are good thinkers necessarily free from superstition? 

5. What could the church do to break the hold of pre- 
vailing superstitions ? 

6. Does any religion beside Christianity fight supersti- 
tion? If not, why not? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Glover, T. R., Jesus in the Experience of Men, Chap. I. 
Thomson, J. Arthur, The Outline of Science, Chap. XV. 


CHAPTER VIII 
PENOLOGY 


IF you wish conclusive proof of “man’s inhumanity 
to man,” familiarize yourself with the history of pun- 
ishment and prisons. This will also show you that 
“the old order changeth,” and that the race is really 
getting on. 


CRIMINALS AND THEIR CRIMES 


Slow progress.—Professor Moberly has pointed out 
that mankind has dealt with crime upon three levels. 
First, there was the level of nature, where crime was 
regarded as a nuisance of which the public was bound 
to get rid. How it got rid of it mattered not at all. 
The treatment of the criminal did not enter into con- 
sideration. Second, there was the level of justice. 
Here ethical considerations carried weight. Efforts 
were made to equate penalty and offense. But only on 
the third level does one reach Christian ground. This 
is the level of redemption. Here the effort is less to 
pay a man back for his wrongdoing and more to restore 
him to rightdoing; indeed, every power is exerted to 
make him a lover of right. 

Humanity has, for the most part, moved on the first 
level. It has been content with the lowest. Let no 
one suppose that this level has been totally discarded 
to date. There are still glaring examples of its popu- 
larity. The second is being increasingly incorporated 
in legal procedure. The third is espoused by a growing 
group. Those who approach the problem of crime on 


76 


PENOLOGY 77 


the level of redemption have still to endure the ancient 
taunt that they are futile idealists. 

“T was in prison.”—The introduction of the prison- 
sentence indicated some advance. Prior to that, penal 
codes put their trust in more abrupt methods—the 
scaffold, the stake, wild beasts, mutilation, torture, 
exile, slavery. The coming of the prison-term was a 
move toward the humane in that it at least stopped 
short of death. Yet how much better death would have 
been than many of the incarcerations! John Howard, 
reporting conditions as they existed toward the 
end of the eighteenth century, said that most of 
the prisons were dark, dirty, with little ventilation; 
the food was unwholesome; water was supplied in 
scanty doles; prisoners had putrid straw for beds; 
they were all in irons and at the caprice of the jailors, 
few of whom had been selected for their humane views. 
The jails were overcrowded and criminals of both 
sexes were indiscriminately herded together; few, if 
any, ennobling influences were brought to bear upon 
their lives. Thus were they kept “in durance vile.” 
John Wesley, in an earlier day, having visited the 
Marshalsea Prison, had called it “a picture of hell.” 

The criminal class. —But who were they? And who 
are they to-day? Investigations prove that children 
of physically, mentally, emotionally, morally deficient 
parents usually enter life with criminal predispositions. 
These are the folks who have made their way to jail. 
But they are not the only ones—probably not even the 
majority. There are others who have been made, and 
not born, criminal. The environment in which they 
lived encouraged them to wrongdoing. 

The average age of commencing a criminal career 
is seventeen; the average of conviction, twenty-three. 
It is noteworthy that, just when the sense of justice 


78 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


should be to the fore and the spirit of adventure most 
pronounced, most criminals start out. The sense of 
outrage caused by suffering from poverty and oppres- 
sion; the normal desire for excitement, thwarted hope- 
lessly ; idleness due to unemployment—these are forces 
that join hands with gambling dens, etc., toward mak- 
ing youths criminals. It stands to reason that the 
youths themselves are by no means devoid of blame; 
but society is responsible for a big share of their sin. 
So it has always been. Conditions have been far worse 
than they are to-day. 

Are all “criminals” bad?—Let it not be forgotten 
that these jails were often peopled by accused persons 
as well as by condemned ones. Not only for crimes 
committed, but in detention for trials, were they sent 
to jail. This worked terrible hardships. Multitudes 
have been jailed for having had the misfortune to 
get into debt, thus making the possibility of paying 
their debts all the more remote. It has been said that 
two classes of people have always gone to jail: the best 
and the worst. It ought to move us to serious thought 
that the present is probably no exception to the past: 
good people are doubtless there now! History fur- 
nishes a formidable list of the spiritually élite who have 
been behind prison bars: 


“Brave souls who took the perilous trail 
And felt the vision could not fail.’’2 


All of which is proof that many have been prisoners 
who never have been criminals. 
CHRISTIANS AND CRIMINALS 


Better prisons.—The improvements that have been 
made in prisons and prison-systems date back to John 





*Edwin Markham, reprinted by permission. 


PENOLOGY 79 


Howard, who uttered such a protest against conditions 
existing in his day (1726-1790) that it rang around 
the world. According to the inscription on his ceno- 
taph in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, in London, this cour- 
ageous philanthropist “‘followed an open, but unfre- 
quented path to immortality.” One interesting fact 
about his life is that his great work was done in the last 
quarter of his life. Not until he was forty-seven did 
he gain his insight into prison life. At that age he 
obtained the office of high sheriff at Bedford. It 
changed his life for him. He became a flaming evan- 
gel on behalf of the better care of the prisoner. To 
the credit of his country, be it said that he met with 
an almost immediate response. The rooms of the jails 
were ordered cleaned and regularly ventilated; infirm- 
aries had to be provided for the sick; those in rags 
were to be clothed; underground dungeons were to be 
put to the least possible use; not only was the health 
of the prisoners to be protected but also were the 
morals. While many wardens doubtless failed to live 
up to all that was prescribed for them, a new standard 
was set up, and prisons ever since have been measured 
by these higher standards. Yet there are many 
prisons to-day that come woefully short of these. 

A Christian stirs the world.—Howard’s interest 
having been aroused, he proceeded, crusader-fashion, 
to discover what was the situation in countries other 
than his own. He was impressed with the comparative 
absence of crime in Holland, which he attributed to the 
reformatory, industrial, and spiritual methods em- 
ployed with criminals there. About the conditions in 
France he “‘cried aloud and spared not,” to the utter 
disgust of the French officials. He knew how to write; 
his pen was a mighty weapon, but it was used only for 
good. Finally, while in Russia, ministering to one who 


80 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


had been stricken with the camp-fever, he himself took 
the disease and succumbed to it. 

His biographer said of him: “The midday sun is 
not more evidently the cause of light and warmth and 
fruitfulness than that Christian love which animated, 
induced, and constrained Howard to consecrate him- 
self entirely to God’s service, and to sacrifice his life 
rather than that fellow men should suffer, whom he 
might assist and relieve.” To the end of his life he 
prayed as earnestly as he worked: “Do thou, O Lord! 
visit the prisoners and captives and manifest thy 
strength in my weakness. Help, Almighty God! for 
in thee do I put my trust, for thou art my rock.” From 
his day to ours prisons and prison systems have 
changed for the better all over the world. 

Other noble men and women took his cause to heart. 
Stephen Grellet, with the blood of nobility in his veins 
and with a deep and fervent religious experience, was 
astounded at the lot of women prisoners. Elizabeth 
Fry, herself the mother of a large family, desiring most 
of all to “simply and singly” follow her Master “in 
the way of his requirements,” joined forces with Grellet 
and other Christian folks, and moved the authorities 
to justice and mercy toward these unfortunates. 

Still the story is sad.—The whole atmosphere 
about prisons has been changed. In our country hun- 
dreds of them offer vastly improved opportunities for 
the physical, mental, social, and spiritual advancements 
of the inmates. No one should withhold a just mede of 
praise. What with the indeterminate sentence, parole 
systems, and the like, we have a right to hope for great 
progress in the near future. Yet it cannot be said that 
all is well with our punitive institutions. Crime is still 
communicated in many of them; so is disease and 
death. .All too many offenders still become “repeat- 


PENOLOGY 81 


LPs 


ers.” Not infrequently jails still deform those they 
are meant to reform. Cruelty has not been wholly 
obliterated. The whole country was shocked a short 
time ago upon learning of several instances of peonage. 
While prisons are coming into more competent hands, 
prison systems still fall prey to the political spoils sys- 
tem. Not long ago the writer encountered an up- 
roariously intoxicated prison inspector holding a lucra- 
tive and responsible position in the penal control of a 
great State. Prison labor for private profit yet remains 
to be abolished in many places. 

We must never forget that often the greatest suffer- 
ers are not those who go to jail, but their families. Not 
only does a social stigma attach itself to them but they 
are left to shift for themselves, while the bread-winner 
gets only a pittance for the convict labor he performs 
during his term. 


THe Lovinc SEARCH FOR THE FACTS 


Greater justice.—Jeremy Bentham had reached 
manhood by the time Howard was doing his most 
telling work. He gave great momentum to Howard’s 
efforts by his inquiry into criminal law and procedure. 
Better laws and more equitable procedure came to ob- 
tain. The law is not yet perfect. But even more than 
law we need understanding. Mere justice demands 
that we shall recognize that many prisoners are not 
criminals, and also that all criminals are not in the 
same class. We have noticed that some are born crim- 
inals. It is becoming clear that they cannot help it. 
The conviction is growing that society is responsible 
for permitting them to be born. These are to be 
judged, not in the light of their misdeeds, but in the 
light of their defects. 

A monk with the spirit of truth—The surpassing 


82 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


contribution toward.a more just view of the criminal 
class had its inception with one who was never con- 
scious of it. Johann Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk 
who became abbot of Brunn, unpretentiously carried 
on some experiments in his cloister garden, and sent 
the result of his researches to a former teacher of his 
in Vienna. But this worthy savant was too busy to 
pay much attention to what his pupil had done. The 
findings of Mendel first appeared in 1866 in an obscure 
publication. 

Not until 1900, eighteen years after Mendel’s death, 
did biologists begin to appreciate the value of the ex- 
periments he had made. His study of genetics revealed 
the trail of heredity. Others have set out upon it, 
and with amazing results. This work has direct bear- 
ing upon many problems, among which are those of 
insanity and criminality. This obscure monk has put 
the whole world in his debt. The problem of those 
who are born criminals is being solved in the light of 
the discoveries and suggestions he made. We are now 
learning that not merely mental but emotional defects 
are responsible for crime, and attention is being paid 
those who are deficient in self-control and in thought. 

Down to rock-bottom.—We have also noticed that 
some are made criminals. \With these, as with the born 
ones, more appropriate methods are now pursued. 
Five methods have been used in the treatment of crim- 
inals: the retributive, the deterrent, the preventive, the 
reformative, and the causative. The retributive is go- 
ing into the discard. Men are not reformed by retri- 
bution; vengeance rights no wrongs, be the vengeance 
public or private. We are coming to suspect that 
“retributive justice’ is a contradiction in terms, since 
“we can be just only to those we love.” We must be 
on guard lest, in our eagerness to aid the criminal, we 


PENOLOGY 83 


aid crime; hence those who sin against society must be 
punished ; but we are no longer counting upon punish- 
ment to be a deterrent of crime. The preventive 
method has not proved as effective as the causative, 
which attacks the causes of crime. 

In our treatment of crime, therefore, the motive 
must be reformative: “Brethren, if a man be over- 
taken in a fault, restore such a one.” Of those who in 
recent years have wrought valiantly in this regard the 
name of Thomas Mott Osborne stands out. In his 
system he tried to keep the consciences as well as the 
minds of the prisoners active, and to develop their 
social regard. It is along lines such as these that mod- 
ern penology moves. Most of all, the method of 
treating crime should be causative. We should go to 
the roots of the business. We should discover why 
criminals are made, why their best instincts have be- 
come misdirected, why they are anti-social. If their 
disorder is due to disorder in our social order, that too 
should be made clear. 

What can Christians do?—They can see to it that 
prison reform is kept alive; that justice is meted out 
equally to all; that money shall not favor a man before 
the law nor race be counted against him; that good 
men and women are in control of our courts and Leg- 
islators; that convicts’ families are provided for, and 
that only men and women with the Christian spirit 
shall be intrusted with institutions of correction. They 
can, moreover, see that the scientifically ascertained 
facts concerning heredity are applied to the criminal 
class. 


For DIscussIOoN 


1. How about the jail in your community? 
2. Should the fact that a candidate for sheriff is, or is 


84 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


not, a Christian man, be considered as a factor for 
his eligibility ? 

3. What is the difference between a bootlegger and a 
conscientious objector? 

4. Both Jesus and Paul went to jail. Can you mention 
some other great folks who were treated similarly? 

5. Would you give a man a job who has just come out 
of jail? 

6. Is there not danger that our interest in fair treatment 
for criminals shall dull our own abhorrence of 
crime? How can we best retain a true perspective ? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Shillitto, Edward, Christian Citizenship, Chap. VIII. 

Diefendorf, Dorr F., The Christian in Social Relation- 
ships, Chap VII. 

Bower, L. F., The Economic Waste of Sin, Chap. VII. 


CHAPTER IX 
DRINK 


NoTHinG in the recent history of the Church of 
Christ in the United States has been more telling than 
its victory over the liquor traffic. Millions scarcely 
realize what has come to pass. It all came so sud- 
denly that it has, figuratively and actually, taken away 
their breath! Yet, had they had eyes to see, they 
would have known that it has been for a long time 
coming. 


A FoRMIDABLE FOE 


An ancient enemy.—Drink is an old and a for- 
midable foe. The liquor problem is probably as old as 
civilization. Read the story of any people and pres- 
ently you come upon the story of its drinking habits. 
Bacchus, originally an Indian deity, found his way into 
other countries under this name and others, and every- 
where there have been many to make obeisance to 
him. Homer twenty-seven hundred years ago be-: 
lieved that “the joys of wine . . . are the rights of 
age.” Two inscribed jars of wine were unearthed in 
the tomb of Tutankhamen, king of Egypt nearly fif- 
teen hundred years before Christ, which tomb was 
entered November 29, 1922. Hundreds of Bible 
passages refer to intoxicants and many of them 
register the ancient conflict with convivial concoc- 
tions. The first chapter of the book of Daniel has 
been regarded as the first of temperance tracts. 

A powerful enemy.—Drink has been no easy 

85 


86 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


enemy to cope with. It has proved a foe worthy of 
the steel. Noah is reported to have had his troubles 
with it. Lycurgus, king of Thrace, came off the better 
in the tussle. He passed the first-known prohibition 
act a millennium prior to the coming of Christ. Nor 
was he the only one to take the problem to heart. In 
459 B. c. China faced its liquor problem and decided 
on prohibition. Most of the Eastern religions set 
themselves like flint against drink. Mohammed’s in- 
sistence that his followers refrain from intoxicants 
has been one of the greatest boons ever bestowed by 
one man upon his fellows. Had he been equally clear 
and clean in other regards, his name and fame would 
be unsullied in the earth. In Jesus’ day, men seriously 
debated whether grace ought to be said until water 
had been added to the wine. 

Yet Bacchus has been peculiarly persistent. If you 
threw him out of the front door, he sneaked back by 
way of the cellar. If he was ousted by legislation, he 
could always stage a come-back because he was so se- 
curely enthroned in the habits of men. Many, and 
with more reason, might have testified with Omar 
Khayyam: 


“Of all that one should care to fathom, I 
Was never deep in anything but—Wine.”’ 


An enemy of repute.—Cassio, speaking with Iago 
in Shakespeare’s Othello, says: “O thou invisible spirit 
of wine, if thou hast no name to be known by, let us 
call thee devil!’ But in many a quarter liquor had a far 
better reputation. It had stood high in the esteem of 
numerous religions, to whom intoxication afforded 
manifestations of the divine. It made its way into folk- 
lore and literature and drama and song and art. 


DRINK 87 


Drink came to be accepted as an indispensable com- 
panion in the best of society. Time came when it was 
thought conducive, not simply to pleasure, but to 
thought. Hence Oliver Goldsmith wrote in his unre- 
generate days: 


“Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains 
With grammar and nonsense and learning, 
Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, 
Gives genius a better discerning.” 


In later days, when liquor had all but put the finishing 
touches on such genius as he had, when he was “‘with- 
out friends, recommendations, money or influence,” 
Samuel Johnson set him right on the matter. Liquor, 
moreover, came to be extolled as the promoter of 
courage. Robert Burns, who fell prey to alcohol (an 
Arabian physician named Abul Kasin, who lived in 
the eleventh century, was the first to use the word 
“alcohol” ) wrote this eulogy: 


“John Barleycorn was a hero bold, 
Of noble enterprise, 
For if you do but taste his blood, 
It will make your courage rise.” 


What brought so fair a reputation down? Simply 
this: the facts were against it. Once they became 
known, it was all up with liquor. Now the poets had 
a different tale to tell. Poe, the drinker, died at forty, 
while Whittier and Holmes lived to be eighty-five; 
Bryant, eighty-four; Longfellow, seventy-five; Lowell, 
seventy-three. It was only natural, therefore, that 
Longfellow should observe: 


“Youth perpetual dwells in fountains, 
Not in flasks and casks and cellars.” 


88 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


And John Masefield, a great English poet of to-day, 
feels called upon to warn his fellow men that 


“Every drop of drink accursed 
Makes Christ within you die of thirst.’’ 


THE CoNFLICT WITH THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC 


What has made it so desperately difficult to deal with 
this enemy of the human race is that it has been so 
firmly intrenched, not only in habits and customs, and 
in the arts, but in politics and business. The liquor 
forces made liquor habits well-nigh invulnerable. The 
men.to whom it brought lucrative profits had legisla- 
tion enacted by which it was made difficult for any to 
say it nay. In some countries to-day it thrives under 
the protection of the church. Even in our day prom- 
inent churchmen in Great Britain are brewery stock- 
holders. This is why the fighting is so difficult there. 

The early struggles against it—The story that 
follows confines itself to the United States. Let us go 
back to Lincoln again, who let it be known that he 
was down on the whole “‘pisen’’ business, and said that 
nothing that had alcohol in it should pollute his lips 
or corrupt his body and mind. In his Springfield 
speech in 1842 he said: “Turn now to the temperance 
revolution. In it we shall find a stronger bondage 
broken, a viler slavery manumitted, a greater tyrant 
deposed. In it, more want supplied, more disease 
healed, more sorrow assuaged. By it, no orphans 
starving, no widows weeping. . . . When there shall 
be neither a slave nor a drunkard on earth—how proud 
the title of that land, which may truly claim to be the 
birthplace and the cradle of both those revolutions!” 





* Collected Poems of John Masefield, “The Everlasting Mercy.” 
The Macmillan Company, publishers. Reprinted by permission. 


a - 


DRINK 89 


“Soldiers, faithful, true and bold.”—-In 1808 the 
first temperance society was formed. General Neal 
Dow was the father of modern prohibition. He was 
able to convince the people of Maine of its economic 
advantages, so that the State adopted prohibition in 
1851. Others fought in the good fight. Clinton B. 
Fisk, John B. Gough, who, himself reclaimed from 
drink, brought to the issue a mighty combination of 
personality and oratory; John G. Woolley, Frances E. 
Willard, and more recently, J. Frank Hanly, William 
Jennings Bryan, and William A. Sunday, took prom- 
inent parts in the fray. Of all of these it 1s to be noted 
that they were followers of Jesus, doing what they did 
because they felt it to be in accordance with his will. 
Their enthusiasm for Jesus made them enemies of drink. 

Forces in the fight—Women have played a con- 
spicuous part in this emancipation. In 1873 a praying 
band knelt on the sanded floor of an old-time saloon, 
to consecrate its members to God in the battle against 
drink. Then came Frances E. Willard, living out her 
epigram: “Only the golden rule of Christ can bring in 
the golden age of man.” She saw to it that this move- 
ment, “born of Christ’s gospel,’ continued to be 
“cradled at his altars.” All of her life she knew what 
at the end of her life she witnessed—‘‘How beautiful 
it is to be with God!” She welded the feminine forces 
into unity, until the Woman’s Christian Temperance 
Union was present in all the land to “agitate, educate, 
organize.” What a work it has done with its total ab- 
stinence pledges, its instruction of the young, its intro- 
duction of scientific temperance instruction into the 
schools, its incessant publicity, propaganda and prayer, 
to say nothing of its contribution to the allied cause 
of Woman Suffrage! The Prohibition Party arose 
and proceeded to inject the proposition into politics. 


90 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


Then came fraternal organizations and kindred move- 
ments. All of these helped to lay the foundations. 

The Anti-Saloon League.—But when, under the 
leadership of Howard H. Russell, the Anti-Saloon 
League was formed, “Ichabod” was written to stay on 
the doors of the liquor business, for its days were num- 
bered. This League both was, and put “the church in 
action against the saloon.” It chose the church as a 
basis for effort rather than the political parties, first, 
because the working church was “the natural foe of 
the drink traffic’; secondly, because the church could 
“meet defeat as often as was necessary to settle any 
question according to the Ten Commandments, and the 
Sermon on the Mount.” It was a nonsectarian move- 
ment and nonpartisan, but it went about its work in 
approved political style. At first the League was ridi- 
culed, but the ridicule was short-lived; its effectiveness 
soon won it the grudging respect of the worst of its 
foes. 

Other factors.—The use of liquor made for eco- 
nomic inefficiency. The sociologists observed it to be 
a waste. As immigration increased, pro-alcoholic 
people came in by droves. The annual bill for liquor 
began to foot the colossal sum of five billion dollars. 

It hurt business, but it hurt the workers more. The 
liquor traffic, by taking the hard-earned money of the 
worker, helped to create the very poverty upon which 
the drink habit throve. It was a vicious link within 
a link. 

The medical men came to oppose it. Professor 
Kraepelin, of Munich, demonstrated beyond cavil, in 
1892, that alcohol is a narcotic and not a stimulant, as 
many still thought it to be. Slowly but surely medical 
practice relinquished alcohol. 

There were political implications. The liquor traf- 


DRINK QI 


fic sought to manipulate the political parties for its 
own aggrandizement. To serve its own ends it did not 
hesitate to nullify the franchise of the people by the 
buying of votes and the corrupting of legislators. De- 
cent citizens became tired of that. 

All of which is but another way of saying that the 
liquor traffic was conducive to immorality. Statistics 
were gathered which showed the relationship of drink- 
ers to crime and vice. Drink was seen to be “one of 
the greatest contributing factors to destitution and 
delinquency.”’ It made brutal fathers, besotted moth- 
ers, immoral sons, erring daughters, neglected chil- 
dren, full jails. Christian men and women stood 
aghast at the spiritual damage it caused. 


THE VicToRY OVER THE Liguor TRAFFIC 


How the battle was won.—The Anti-Saloon 
League utilized the anger of the South at the bad liquor 
that had been sold the Negroes, and led in making five 
States dry in three years. The newer Western States 
followed suit. State after State followed, and where 
States did not vote dry, counties did, with the result 
that by 1912 most of the counties in this country were 
dry. Thirty-five out of forty-eight States had voted 
dry before federal action went into effect. In 1913, 
the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution was 
proposed, but it was not until August, 1917, that the 
Senate, by a vote of sixty-five to twenty, passed the 
right to submit this amendment to the several States; 
and not until December of the same year was it passed 
by Congress. The honor of being the thirty-sixth State 
(required number) went to Nebraska in January of 
the following year. Only a few States refused to 
ratify, and most of these have since decided to come 
in out of the wet. Reenforced by timely economic and 


92 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


war factors, the church had done what it started out 
to do. In the witty words of Wayne B. Wheeler, its 
brilliant leader in this fight, it had beat the liquor traf- 
fic ‘“wholesale, retail, and cocktail.” The nation thus 
officially chose to abstain from alcoholic beverages. 
It launched a new experiment in democracy. 

“‘A victory for the church.’’—If ever there was a 
clear-cut victory for the church, this was one. Dr. 
Frank Crane reported that “the little church on Main 
Street” had accomplished it. The moral appeal had 
swung both business and politics into line. “The pub- 
lic press,’ said Mr. Wheeler to the writer, “was gen- 
erally opposed to prohibition. . . . Business was cau- 
tious or indifferent except where some strong men 
were inspired through their relationship to the church. 
Political life generally was disposed to be unfriendly 
until the power of voting Christians alarmed some can- 
didates and replaced others with men of principle. 
None of the common factors of our national life were 
vitally concerned with prohibition to the extent the 
church was involved.” 

“Eternal vigilance the price of liberty.”—But the 
task of the church is not done. The victory must be 
preserved. This is not an easy thing to do. We have 
seen what a faculty drink has for coming back. For 
one thing, habits are not easily destroyed, especially 
once they have been socialized. To gratify appetite 
people will commit the most outrageous of sins. They 
will break the law and lie with a vengeance. They 
have circulated, for example, the story that prohibition 
makes for drug addiction. The evidence is abundant 
that liquor did just that. Many a weakling became a 
drug addict by the whisky route. Nevertheless, the 
church must see that this temptation too is put beyond 
the weak. But a more serious danger than the carry- 


DRINK 93 


ing of pocket-flasks or misrepresentations is found in 
the apathy that settles down on good people once vic- 
tory has come. They act as if it were quite enough to 
get prohibition written into the law of the land. But 
far more important than this is the enforcing of it, 
and convincing the younger generation of the wisdom 
of the prohibitory statute, so that it shall become axi- 
omatic that it is necessary not only to “keep the man 
away from the liquor but to keep the liquor away from 
the man.” 

Pressing on to ultimate victory—Nor should it 
be forgotten that we have won but one battle in a long 
and bitter war. To be sure, our victory meant very 
much toward the ultimate doom of drink. But in 
large sections of the world drink is still enthroned. 
The churches have now put into the field the World 
League Against Alcoholism, which through the heroic 
services of such men as William E. (“Pussyfoot’’) 
Johnson, endeavors to create sentiment and guide 
action for the world-wide outlawing of this treacherous 
traffic. 


Here, then, are some of the evils against which 
Christianity has wrought valiantly. The power of 
Jesus has served to drive slavery from all but the last 
dim corners of the earth. The considerateness of 
Christ has immensely diminished cruelty. Wherever 
he has come superstition has gone. Punishments are 
now being measured by his standard of salvation. 
And to such follies as drink Christianity is spelling 
doom. 


For Discussion 


1. What was Jesus’ contribution toward the abolition of 
the liquor traffic ? 


94 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


2. Did all of Protestantism unite in the battle with the 
liquor traffic? Did all of the Roman Catholic 
Church? What was the proportion of each? 

3. Is alcohol necessary as a medicine? Would you use 
it as such? 

4. Did the coming of the motion picture influence prohi- 
bition? How? Should the church see to it that 
there are adequate substitutes for the saloon? Name 
some. 

5. How can the enforcement of the prohibition law be 
improved? 

6. Should the church continue such agencies as the Anti- 
Saloon League or the World League Against Alco- 
holism? For how long? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Richardson, Norman E., The Liquor Problem. 
Iglehart, Ferdinand C., King Alcohol Dethroned. 
Bower, L. F., The Economic Waste of Sin, Chap. VI. 


PART Ti 


CHRISTIANITY AT WORK WITH HUMAN 
VALUES 


But one thing is needful, and ye shall be true 
To yourselves and the goal and the God that you seek; 
Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to you 
If ye love one another, if your love be not weak.! 
—Alfred Noyes. 


*From Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes. Reprinted by per- 
mission of Frederick A. Stokes Company, publishers. 





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Fi. ASO aa 


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CHAPTER X 
THE CHILD 


Ir you have a heart, you will be proud of what 
Christianity has done for the child. If you have eyes 
to see, you will be glad of what Christianity is doing for 
it now. 


Past ACHIEVEMENTS 


Exposure and its cure.—Few things are more 
gruesome than the stories that reach us out of the past 
of the treatment given children. A letter written in 
the year 1 A. D. was found in Egypt. In it an Egyptian 
Greek expressed to his wife his wishes concerning the 
child that had come: “If it was a male, let it live; if it 
was a female, cast it out.” 

The exposure of children was a common practice. 
Those who did not want them left them to starve, or 
killed them, and whether they fell prey to wild beasts 
or were placed into captivity for future immoral pur- 
poses, concerned them not at all. Both Plato and 
Aristotle gave exposure their approval. It comes with 
a shock when one learns that the most cultured race of 
that day saw no wrong in it. Seneca wrote: “Children, 
if unnaturally formed from birth, we drown. It is 
not anger, but reason, thus to separate the useless from 
the sound.”* Pliny coolly refers to those who, prob- 
ably from superstitious motives, hunt for the brains or 
the marrow of exposed children. How brutal all of 
this sounds to us who have been trained to listen to the 

*Reprinted from Gesta Christi, by C. Loring Brace, by permis- 
sion of the publishers, George H. Doran Company. 
97 


98 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


one who said: “Whoever receives a little child like this 
for my sake, receives me.”’ 

Needless to say, the instinct of humanity was never 
totally silent against exposure. But, then, there were 
those who traded on this instinct! These men were 
inhuman enough to search the exposed children that 
were still alive and deform them, and then offer them 
for sale to the compassionate. Seneca who, as we have 
noticed, could see no wrong in exposure as such, could 
not tolerate this. It stirred him to the depths. He 
violently denounced it. Those little creatures with 
their curved backs, shortened limbs and broken joints 
brought out his ardent protest. It should be noted that 
in his day this practice was by no means uncommon 
in Rome. But his protests went for little, as had those 
of the Stoics among the philosophers before him. 

The Christian church speaks out.—The leaders of 
the Christian Church, from the very beginning and 
without exception, attacked this brutality with all the 
strength that was in them. In this instance, at least, 
they rang true to their Master. They taught that 
“the wicked alone can expose his children; for us, this 
impiety only inspires horror: first, because the most 
of these unfortunate little ones are destined for de- 
bauch; then, because we should fear the accusation of 
murder if they should die.”* Pauperism was wide- 
spread through the empire, but the Christian leaders 
would not even tolerate the suggestion that poverty was 
a permissible excuse for exposure or abandonment. 
Nor did they rest content with protest. They organ- 
ized to save those who were being exposed. The great 
Council of Nicaea, in the year 325, ordered hospitals 
for foundlings. The custom grew up in many churches 


* Reprinted from Gesta Christi, by C. Loring Brace, by permis- 
sion of the publishers, George H. Doran Company. 


THE CHILD 99 


to have receptacles where these children might be de- 
posited, after which they were turned over to the hos- 
pitals or orphanages which, in turn, were connected 
with the church. Gradually ameliorative laws got into 
the statute books, and at length the law came to regard 
the exposure of children worse than murder, since ex- 
posure struck at those who were too feeble and de- 
pendent to be able to defend themselves. 

Parental power Christianized.—Nor was this a 
particularly alluring world for such children as their 
parents retained. The power of the father had to be 
reckoned with. The Roman father could do as he 
wished with his child. He could sell his son into slav- 
ery; he could kill him if he chose. No one could inter- 
fere; he had complete control, both over the life and 
the property of the child. What was true of the Ro- 
man father obtained elsewhere. Primitive paternal 
power was a dreadful thing. The lot of the son was 
usually superior to that of the daughter. Public opin- 
ion and law changed in favor of the son long before 
it was altered out of consideration for the daughter. 

Seneca tells of a knight whom the people pursued 
with daggers because he had scourged his son to death. 
He had a legal right to do so, but it had come to be 
regarded as too severe. Yet at the same time it met 
with hearty approbation if a father, catching his 
daughter in a misdeed, killed her on the spot. What 
wrought the change of heart and law by which pater- 
nal power came to rest “in affection, not in atrocity’’? 
To quote an ancient writer: “Christian discipline grad- 
ually softened the severity of parental authority.” 
More specifically, it was the teaching and legislation of 
the church that was responsible for it. Under the leg- 
islation of Constantine, paternal “power” received a 
set-back from which it never recovered. Justinian 


100 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


(528 A. D.) enacted the code in which the daughter re- 
ceived at least some consideration. Among Christian 
lawmakers the tendency to guarantee justice to the child 
developed everywhere. Yet much injustice remains. 


PRESENT PROBLEMS 


Child-marriage.—We must not forget that in most 
parts of the world the old idea of parental power still 
obtains in more or less modified forms. Consider the 
iniquity of child marriages. These are contracted by 
the thousands before the children reach their teens. 
In India “this custom, in a land of high mortality, has 
produced thousands of little widows and widowers. 
The boy may marry again, ... but the poor girl—her 
story is the saddest of all the suffering little women in 
the world. She is held responsible for the death of her 
husband, and as a criminal her hair is shaved off and 
her dearly loved ornaments are taken away and she... 
becomes the drudge of the family. She may not re- 
marry, but remains until the end of her life a poor, 
miserable soul—unless, of course, she be the mother of 
sons. This lifts her to a position of honor from which 
she cannot be completely displaced. The most com- 
mendable thing for the widow to do until comparatively 
recent time was to mount the funeral pile and be burned 
to death with the body of her husband.”* No wonder 
Christians are resolved that 


“Where a woman still is vassal, where a child is still a 
slave, 
There shall rise our instant bivouac, there be digged a 
tyrant’s grave.’ 


*"The Religions of Mankind, Edmund Soper, The Abingdon 
Press. 

‘In the Dawn, by Odell Shepard. Reprinted by permission 
of the author. 


THE CHILD IOI 


Child-labor.—If you think India too far away to 
enter very deeply into your consciousness, you may 
look closer home and see child-labor reap the same grim 
harvest it has reaped throughout the world for years. 
Do not fail to keep in mind the distinction between 
child work, which is beneficial, and child-labor, which 
is blighting. Consider what a fight men and women 
with the spirit and mind of Jesus have had to wage, 
and still have to, in order to rid the world of the blight 
of child-labor. Lord Shaftesbury, who set his hand 
to many a noble task, is immortalized in humane his- 
tory chiefly because of the service he performed in this 
regard. He stirred the world with reports which 
showed, among other things, how “little boys and girls 
five years old were put to dragging sledge-tubs by 
girdle and chain, on all fours, through roadways often 
no more than twenty-two or twenty-eight inches in 
height and full of mud and water, and exposed to all 
the miseries of cold, darkness, and foul atmosphere.’’® 
Urged on by his consecrated wife, who advised him 
to “go forward, and to victory,’ he kept up an in- 
cessant struggle until all the English-speaking world 
came to hear and to heed what he had to say. Judging 
by present reports, there is call for several new 
Shaftesburies in these United States. Here is hoping 
that some reader of these pages will be one! 

If you think the prevalence of child-labor in Amer- 
ica appalling, consider what it must be in all the world. 
The attempts for a Constitutional amendment against 
child-labor have been based upon the conviction that 
a Constitution that is not for the child is against it; for 
greed and poverty join hands in depriving multitudes 





*Reprinted from The Story of Social Christianity, by F. H. 
Stead, by permission of the publishers, George H. Doran Com- 
pany. 


102 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


of children of adequate opportunities for schooling and 
for play, for health and proper development. Child- 
labor is an international problem, receiving considera- 
tion at present from the League of Nations and the In- 
ternational Association for Labor Legislation. Here 
is a problem that challenges all our minds and hearts. 
All that is Christian in us remembers what Mrs. 
Browning, though dead, yet reminds the world of: 


“They look up with their pale and sunken faces, 
And their look is dread to see. 
For they mind you of their angels in high places, 
With eyes turned on Deity. 
‘How long,’ they say, ‘how long,’ O cruel nation, 
Will you stand, to move the world on a child’s heart,— 
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, 
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? 
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, 
And your purple shows your path! 
But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper 
Than the strong man in his wrath.” 


Childhood.—Yet no reform will permanently benefit 
the child until people arrive at a clear understanding 
of the meaning of childhood. The world has not yet 
caught up with Christ in its view of the child. Indeed, 
it is still a long distance from it. Jesus put the empha- 
sis upon the child. He set it in the midst. He realized 
its possibilities. He saw the advantages of childlike- 
ness. The church took the child to heart, but it forgot 
Christ’s emphasis. The child received a secondary 
place in its work. How small a place many churches 
still make for childhood in their programs! The world 
must be brought around to Jesus’ way of thinking in 
regard to the child. We shall never capture the world 
for Christ until we capture the child for him. “Take 


THE CHILD 103 


heed that ye despise not one of these little ones.’’ One 
encouraging sign that many are taking heed is the 
growing enthusiasm about child-study. 


THE TASK THAT REMAINS 
The right of the child to be well-born.—This is a 


great day in which to live, if for no other reason than 
that this is the age of the child. We hope that our 
nation shall be a nation for the child. One way to 
insure this is to recognize the right of the child to be 
born of decent and healthy parents. The State should 
do all in its power to prevent the coming into this 
world of abnormal progeny. Many children are 
doomed by their heredity. They do not even get a fair 
start in life. The child has a right to be born with 
an adequate mental and emotional make-up. It is ours 
to protect that right, and to see to it that both public 
opinion and law shall take cognizance of it. 

The right of the child to a good environment.— 
Children used to be, and of right, still are being im- 
pressed with what they owe society. But the question 
should also be reversed. What does society owe the 
child? That is getting to be the question. It cer- 
tainly owes the child healthful nourishment and good 
surroundings, adequate housing, proper opportunity 
for play and work, favorable conditions for its well- 
being. In this regard great changes remain to be made. 
Those that need yet to be made may not come rapidly. 
But they cannot come too soon. There are still many 
parents who look upon their children as a financial 
asset, to be put to work just as soon as possible, so 
they may bring in money. Since much of a child’s 
environment lies in the home, good parents, who will 
exemplify toward their children the traits of divine 
parenthood, are essential. Public opinion and public 


104 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


custom form part of the environment of the child, as 
does the nation. Any town that has no supervised 
playgrounds for its children owes childhood an apol- 
ogy. The newspapers are part of the child’s environ- 
ment. The amusement places are. These all must be 
made good company for the child. To them all Jesus 
is saying, “It is not the will of your Father in heaven 
that a single one of these little ones should be lost.” 

The right of the child to be well-trained.—The 
conspiracy of silence must be broken up. The child 
must be told the truth about life. It should receive an 
education adapted to its needs and its possibilities. 
Much in this direction has been accomplished, but 
much remains to be done. Here too we must first get 
understanding and then fit our methods to suit. The 
situation is forcibly illustrated in a recent report on 
the child at a great British Christian conference: “‘A’s 
child, mentally slow, may long for the cowboy’s or the 
woodman’s life, and is pushed (with difficulty) 
through a public school and university. B’s child is 
intellectually brilliant, reaches the seventh standard of 
a crowded city school at eleven years old, marks time 
there for three years and then begins his life-work as 
a railway van-boy. The sole reason for this difference 
is that A’s income is ten times as large as B’s.’’® 

Many a manufacturer would have been a teacher 
had his father not left him a mill, and many a teacher 
would have been a farmer had he been left land 
enough. People must be trained in that for which 
they are most fit, and vocational guidance should pre- 
vent them from drifting into a job where they make 
a mere livelihood, and make sure that they arrive at 
the task in which they can best make life count. 


*Christian Citizenship, Edward Shillito. Reprinted by permis- 
sion of Longmans, Green & Co., publishers. 


THE CHILD 105 


The right of the child to be whole-souled.—Last, 
but not least, the child has a right to religion that fits 
its life. The fame of Robert Raikes, the father of the 
Sunday schools, has gone into all the earth because 
he launched the first systematic effort “to reach the 
poor and unschooled with a Christian training on a 
large scale.” But much of the religious training, prior 
to his day and since, has been designed to foist an 
adult religion ready-made upon children. We now 
understand that they must be helped to find God in 
their own way—their own way of thinking, feeling, 
acting—and aspiring. They must have first-hand expe- 
rience with beauty, goodness, truth, and usefulness. 
The graded lessons and the week-day systems of reli- 
gious education endeavor to approach this ideal. Re- 
searches have been and are being made into the reli- 
gious experience and significance of childhood. Much 
more awaits discovery. We must know childhood and 
Christianize it if we wish to do it justice. 

A child-centered civilization——As if there were 
not tasks enough implied in the foregoing, let this 
further word be said: No civilization can endure that 
does not put the child at its center. The medieval 
church had crusades by children. The modern church 
must crusade for children. When the world begins 
to compete and cooperate in child welfare, the child 
will be the great bond of unity between the nations. 
When the social order is examined in the light of 
whether it is conducive to the good of childhood, the 
social order will come right. Then it will be seen that 
as things are the child is led all too much to self-seek- 
ing, materialism, and secularity, and that things ought 
to be organized so as to be aids toward leading the 
child to a life of love and service. When the candor, 
loyalty, teachableness, and faith that characterize the 


106 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


child are accepted as standards for life as Jesus ac- 
cepted them, international relations will be adjusted. 

Jesus made the child central in his teachings. This 
is one truth that rises clearly above the debris of theo- 
logical speculation concerning the teachings of Jesus. 
A Christ-centered civilization will have to be a child- 
centered one. There is an unmistakable lineage be- 
tween Christianity and “the tendency of the race to 
become childlike.” 


For Discussion 


1. Illustrate the difference between child-labor and child 
work. In which way can we safely distinguish 
between these two? 

2. If you had to divide a child’s time, what would you 
let it do? Would you divide it differently for one 
twelve years old and one aged six? 

3. What is the truth in the saying, “Give me a child until 
it is seven and I do not care who gets it after that”? 

4. What do you think of children’s sermons or Junior 
Church? How many societies in your church ask 
for the time and interest of children? Would one 
line of appeal be better than so many? 

5. Can you think of any changes that might be made in 
our industrial order by which the welfare of child- 
hood might be advanced? 

6. We have been speaking of the duty of parents to 
children. Enumerate some of the duties of children 
to their parents. 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Versteeg, John M., The Deeper Meaning of Stewardship, 
Chap. XI. 

Wise, Stephen S., Child Versus Parent, Chap. II. 

Fuller, Raymond G., Child Labor and the Constitution, 
Chap. I. 

Richardson, Norman E., American Home Series. 


CHAPTER XI 
WOMAN 


HERACLITUS said, “Where women are honored, the 
divinities are complacent; where they are despised, 
it is useless to pray to God.” Christianity has accom- 
plished much for woman. Woman, in return, has ac- 
complished much for Christianity. She would have 
accomplished more, had she been given more of a 
chance. 


MAN’s INHUMANITY TO WOMAN 


A taste of the past.—Time was when “matri- 
archal” forms of society existed. In these, women 
were dominant and men played minor parts. But the 
“patriarchal” system came to prevail, and woman was 
brought under the domination of man. Her personal, 
social, political, and spiritual inferiority came to be 
taken for granted. 

The rabbis had a venerable saying: “Men should 
be careful lest they cause women to weep, for God 
counts their tears.”’ Yet the rabbinical schools taught 
that the fall of man was to be traced to woman. Ju- 
daism did not account woman the equal of man. 

The Manu code of India reflected the opinion of 
well-nigh all the world: “Day and night must women 
be held in a state of dependence.’”’ Gautama Buddha, 
like Jesus, was considerate in his treatment of women. 
But, unlike Jesus, he considered woman a bar to the 
progress of man. “To make woman a stumbling- 
block to man in the journey toward his heart’s desire 
is to lower her condition and at the same time to keep 

107 


108 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


man down to a level at which the finest flowers of indi- 
vidual and social life can never grow. Gautama did 
not see this, and his system suffers to our own day 
from this defect.’ Confucius considered a wife far 
inferior to her husband, and taught that her primary 
duty is obedience to him. He, and his followers after 
him, considered woman merely as a means to an end. 
Among peoples such as the Hebrew the woman who 
was wife and mother held a relatively honored place, 
and among the Teutonic tribes she was held in even 
greater esteem. Yet always her place was secondary. 
The Stoics among the jurists accounted her inher- 
ently inferior and “uncertain”; and the Roman did 
not blush, in the making of his laws, to apply the 
term “imbecillitas’ frequently to her. Contempt, 
degradation, dependence, subordination, abuse—these 
are words that must figure largely in any accurate his- 
tory of womankind. 

“In bondage vile!?’—Prior to the coming of Jesus 
attempts had been made to ameliorate the condition 
of women in regard to such matters as inheritance and 
property rights. Some of them had met with success. 
As early as the first century B. c. the women of Rome 
had obtained the right to divorce their husbands upon 
certain grounds. Yet, on the whole, women had but 
little “proprietary and personal’ independence; “tu- 
tors’ had control not only over their property but 
over their lives; divorce in most cases was easily ob- 
tainable by the husband, but could not be secured upon 
any ground by the wife; political rights were denied 
her; in many places, like cattle, women were bought 
and sold. 

Nor should one suppose that these views and this 


*The Religions of Mankind, Edmund Soper. The Abingdon 
Press. 


WOMAN 109 


treatment vanished from the earth with the coming of 
Jesus. They persisted for long. The blackest curse 
that has ever rested upon woman has come since the 
Christian era began. The lust and selfishness of Mo- 
hammed have blighted the lives of millions of women 
throughout these centuries. And in Christendom it- 
self the subjection of women continued. Not a little 
of it still persists. Laws have generally been against 
her. In some places, if a husband killed his wife, he 
was treated the same as if he had killed any other 
person; but if a wife killed her husband, it was deemed 
far more atrocious than the ordinary crime. For a 
man to beat his wife was considered nothing amiss. 
In an old book called The Woman's Lawyer, one 
quaint passage runs: “Justice Brooke affirmeth plainly 
that if a man beat an outlaw, a traitor, a pagan, his 
villein, or his wife, it is dispunishable, because by the 
Law Common these persons can have no action. God 
send gentlewomen better sport or better companie!’’? 
A historical document tells of “a bought wife deliv- 
ered in a halter” in September, 1782. Women have 
been yoked with beasts, pulling at the plow. Even 
Blackstone opined that “fa mother . . . is entitled to 
no power, but only to reverence.’* In England the 
public whipping of female offenders was not abolished 
until 1820. 


THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY 


Christ and woman.—lIn his labors of teaching and 
healing, Christ had much to do with women. There 
were women in the select circle of his intimates. And 
to the last he had his mother at heart. How could 


* Reprinted from Gesta Christi, by C. Loring Brace, by permis- 
sion of the publishers, George H. Doran Company. 
* [bid. é 


110 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


Christ have been what he was, had not God given him 
a good mother? In all his dealing with women he 
showed his faith in them. Reverence rather than 
deference characterized his attitude. 

Certain gospel passages have been pressed into sery- 
ice to prove the contrary, but a fair reading of Jesus’ 
words will reveal that he always assumed their inher- 
ent equality. On occasion he also expressed it. He 
believed women capable of the same spiritual achieve- 
ments that are within reach of men. Mind could wish 
for no clearer proof of this than that record in Mark’s 
Gospel: “And there come his mother and his brethren; 
and standing without, they sent unto him, calling him. 
And a multitude was sitting about him; and they say 
unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren with- 
out seek thee. And he answereth them and saith, Who 
is my mother and my brethren? And _ looking 
round on them that sat round about him, he saith, 
Behold, my mother and my brethren! For whosoever 
shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and 
sister, and mother.” 

His high estimate of woman set women free. His 
view of them the church was slow, but sure, to follow. 
His insistence on the single standard of conduct— 
that there is not one code of ethics for women and 
an easier one for men, that men have no right to com- 
mit sins they will not condone in their sisters—made 
for purity of relations between the sexes and made 
home life, as we know and love it, possible. His ex- 
alted opinion of woman gave woman faith in herself. 
When he told Martha that Mary had “chosen the bet- 
ter part,” he dealt a death-blow to the notion that 
woman has business only in domestic pursuits. How 
many of them have found in him inspiration for fuller 
life! They became convinced that not sex but charac- 


WOMAN II! 


ter made one superior; that woman, so far from being 
a secondary being, has her rightful place as colaborer 
with Christ. 

And men came to view women in Jesus’ way until, 
as one writer put it years ago, “the preeminence of 
the Christian nations in Europe and of their descend- 
ants and colonists in every quarter of the globe, is 
most strikingly displayed in the equality and dignity 
which their institutions confer upon the female char- 
acter.”’* Wherever Christ has come in, woman has 
come up. 

Purity.—Into “that hard, pagan world’ came 
women who loved Christ and brought pure, cleansing 
life into the foul air of that day. It was their sense 
of holiness that wrought the miracle! Christian 
women became famed for their chastity. They gave 
up their lives rather than submit to the violation of 
their bodies. They “came clean.’”’ They exerted an 
incalculable influence for good on men. ‘What 
women these Christians have!” exclaimed Libanias 
when Anthusa brought her now famous son, Chrysos- 
tom, to him. In that early church adultery came to 
be loathed as worse than murder. Purity was ex- 
pected of all. 

The church and woman.—Paul was unable to rise 
quite to the height of Christ’s view. The opinions of 
his day had made their mark upon him. The cults he 
encountered saw but little good in woman. Men, 
then as since, thought themselves by nature superior. 
Paul could not cut himself loose from this sort of 
view. He fell behind his Master in regard to woman- 
hood. Yet, loath though he was to concede them 
equality either in society or the church, Paul believed 


“Reprinted from Gesta Christi, by C. Loring Brace, by permis- 
sion of the publishers, George H. Doran Company. 


II2 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


unquestioningly in their spiritual equality. He was 
confident that in Christ “there is neither male nor 
female”; but only character counts. All things consid- 
ered, this was a long step for Paul to take. It shows 
that the spirit of Jesus does dispel prejudice. 

Woman and the church.—We are unable to tell 
precisely what place woman held in the early church. 
It is certain, however, that her part was considerable. 
This was so from the start. Woman figured prom- 
inently in the work Paul carried on. In those intimate 
personal touches appended to the Epistles of the New 
Testament apostolic greetings go to women as well as 
to men. Indeed, women are commended for the serv- 
ice they rendered the church. They prophesied, and 
even served as deacons in the church. This does not 
mean, however, that at that time they were full-time 
employees of the church, with acknowledged and regu- 
lar standing. Nor does it mean that they had much 
share in church management as such. These are re- 
cent developments; the admission of women to the 
highest representative or legislative bodies of the great 
denominations has come very recently. It does mean 
that, despite views of their inferiority that often and 
for long obtained, their spiritual status was admitted. 
It was conceded by all that they could enter into all 
the inner experiences of the Christian life. 

One cannot but be impressed with the anomaly of 
the church, holding for centuries that women were on 
an inferior social, economic, political, and ecclesiasti- 
cal plane, yet at the same time granting undisputedly 
their equal spiritual significance. What is noteworthy 
here is that the church admitted their equality in the 
highest respect. 

The teaching of the church prior to the Reforma- 
tion reflected these contradictory attitudes. Medieval 


WOMAN 113 


mystical writers had a bad habit of picturing temptation 
in the form of woman, and the teaching and practice 
of celibacy assuredly were not calculated to increase 
the esteem for women. But these were more than off- 
set by the influence attached to the admiration and 
adoration of the mother of Jesus, which greatly inten- 
sified respect for womanhood. Women, furthermore, 
came to hold positions of honor and trust. They 
headed nunneries, hospitals, orphanages, and were 
thus recognized by the church. And chivalry, that ro- 
mantic and humane movement, served to elevate 
woman in a fashion unknown hitherto. 

Men’s efforts on behalf of women.—And always 
a deal of the spirit of Jesus mellowed the conduct of 
men. Christianity was all the while influencing the 
legislators in the work of establishing more tolerable 
conditions and the making of more equitable laws. 
Constantine limited divorce, prescribing the conditions 
under which alone it was to be obtained. Claudius 
was the first to attempt the removal of “tutelage” 
over women of full age; and Justinian, who prided 
himself on being the protector of women, set himself 
even more resolutely to wipe it out. 

Not everything was clear gain. Favorable legisla- 
tion made by one ruler was repudiated by another; 
“some were the laws of the Czsars and some of 
Christ,” but the cumulative effect was beneficent. 
Wherever Christianity spread, the marriage ties were 
strengthened. It came to be the proud epitaph over a 
man’s grave that he had been the husband of but one 
wife. Our word “wed” goes back to the Nordic 
pledge of monetary rights for the wife. Kings, when 
crowned, took an oath to be “the especial defender of 
widows and wards.”” Even women in serfdom eventu- 
ally came to better things. 


114 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


In the thirteenth century Saint Louis built a house 
outside the walls of Paris for women “who, through 
poverty, had incurred the sin of wantonness.” In true 
Christlike spirit he named it “The House of the 
Daughters of God.’ There may have been earlier 
attempts to bless these unfortunates with another 
chance; there have been many since. Such names as 
Elizabeth Fry, Josephine Butler, and Catharine Booth 
come to mind at once when one thinks of woman’s hu- 
manity to woman. Incidentally, you will be a better 
woman, or a better man, if you take the time to read 
the story of these women, or of Florence Nightingale 
and her sisterhood of nursing, or of Susan B. Anthony 
and her labors for womanhood. 

But to return to the earlier day. The evidence is 
replete that Christianity, and the church that bore its 
name, steadfastly favored the higher and fuller life 
for woman. The church wrought mightily to abolish 
the abomination of tutelage; it threw its influence on 
the side of the “dower”; it revolutionized marriage 
by elevating it from the idea of a purchase to that of 
a voluntary union based on love; it advanced, by its 
teachings and laws, “the proprietary and personal” in- 
dependence of woman, and it made, and is making, not 
merely for equal, but for equitable treatment of her. 


THE MopERN MOVEMENT 


Political equality—The Reformation regained for 
the world a more wholesome view of family life and 
relations. This ultimately bore fruition in a move- 
ment outside the church, yet vitally affected by, and 
related to, Christianity. The final fight for social, 
legal, and political equity began with the French Revo- 
lution. In 1789 the National Assembly was petitioned 
by women of Paris for equal political rights. With 


WOMAN II5 


the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication 
of the Rights of Women the year following, the mod- 
ern “Women’s Movement” got under way. Other in- 
fluences helped woman’s emancipation along. The 
growth of democracy and the development of modern 
industry each had a share. 

To-day, in most English-speaking lands and in much 
of Christendom, woman’s legal rights are on a par 
with those of man, while political equality, obtained 
in the United States in the year 1920, cannot be far 
away in many other lands. Yet the bulk of the 
womanhood of the world is still in all manner of 
bondage, and it is the task of Christianity to set it 
free. | 

In recent years and now.—You do well to mark 
this past century; these years since the spirit of Jesus 
and the scientific spirit have had freer course in the 
earth, for woman has come to her highest place in the 
past half century. That is so in the church; that is so 
in Christianity, for through the church women mis- 
sionaries are bringing life and light and leading to 
their unprivileged sisters in many non-Christian lands, 
thus influencing for the better the other religions that 
would never have turned a hand to help womanhood 
had Christianity not come. That is so in education, 
for while some belated folks still frown on higher edu- 
cation for women, woman, both in the home and the 
school, has a large part in molding the race to be. In 
the home, with increasing intelligence, she is creating, 
in miniature, that perfect state of affairs in which love 
shall be the order of each day. 

“Mutual contract.’—Sir Henry Maine has said 
that the most significant change comes when people 
shift from the basis of status to the basis of contract. 
This shift was never more swift than in the past few 


116 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


years. Change always runs the risk of decay. There 
are sociologists who deplore that in all this change 
there has come a loss of honor for womanhood and a 
loss of social respect for them. 

Certain it is that there are antagonisms that have 
been, and are being, engendered, that we must man- 
age to get over. “Three tendencies,’ says Doctor 
Langdale, “‘are to be deprecated. One is the expecta- 
tion that the influence of woman’s power can displace 
woman’s power of influence. Another is the dis- 
position to set the sexes over against each other. Men 
and women differ physically, and still more psycholog- 
ically. They are complements, not competitors. The 
third is an overestimation of outside life. Not rarely 
some mother who, in rearing useful children, has ren- 
dered woman’s most valuable and courageous service 
to society, is heard to apologize that she has done noth- 
ing in life comparable to some woman of distinction 
in a profession. Society owes her an apology for 
anything that conceals the recognition that the home, 
based upon the love of one man for one woman, and 
their mutual care of children, is the finest and most 
fundamental institution of Christian civilization and 
that by it all other activities are to be judged.’”® We 
may count on Christianity to make the poet’s vision a 
growing reality: 


“The man to be more of woman; she of man; 
He gain in sweetness and in moral height, 
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world; 
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care, 
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind; 
Till at the last she sets herself to man 
Like perfect music unto noble words.” 


*Citizenship and Moral Reform, The Abingdon Press. 


WOMAN 117 


For DIscussIon 


1. Is woman under greater obligation to Christ than man 
is? 

2. What percentage of the womanhood of the race does 
not yet have equal rights and standing with men? 

3. What moral gains have come from the extension of the 
franchise to women? 

4. Should women be pastors of churches? 

5. Which forms of Christian service can women render 
from which men are of necessity debarred? 

6. How can young women best help young men to be 
Christian ? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Tuttle, Florence G., The Awakening of Woman. 

Bell, Raley H., Woman from Bondage to Freedom. 

Smith, George B., The Principles of Christian Living, 
Chap. XII. 


CHAPTER XII 
MANHOOD 


CHRISTIANITY faced a more difficult task with men 
than with women or children. Man was in the ascend- 
ency; the primary need in his case was not to set him 
free or to secure certain rights for him. It had to set 
him right. With man, generally speaking, the simple 
trust and democracy of childhood had been outgrown. 
Secondary to woman in emotional depth, the experi- 
ences of his workaday world (no less in this bustling 
age than in the days gone by) tended to heartlessness. 
For him, above all, Christianity had to effect an inner 
transformation. In the fine phrase of our fathers, it 
had to do “a work of grace in his heart.” And it had 
to do this for him, if ever childhood and womanhood 
were to “have free course and be glorified.” 


“DEEP IN THE HEARTS OF MEN” 


“The Manhood of the Master.”,—A serious gap 
remains in your reading until you peruse some such 
book as the one Doctor Fosdick wrote. For there, in 
the traits of the Master, you see the marks of a man. 
Such was the manhood he had that, almost instinctively, 
we capitalize the word when we write of him as Man. 
In his dealings with men he encountered many an un- 
manly trait. He saw pride, praying on street corners 
and sitting in the chief seats of the synagogues. He 
met men impure in thought and action, yet scorning 
those whose disgrace they helped to bring about. He 
met materialists of the most practical type. He en- 

118 


MANHOOD 119 


countered smug opportunists, ready at any time to sell 
out to advantage. He came upon “bullies”? who loved 
to lord it over men. He knew how men could hate. 
And he knew how selfish they could be. He had seen 
greed grinding the faces and hearts of the poor. 

Yet, in the midst of all this, and without easy com- 
promise, he had a character that has been both the 
admiration and inspiration of men through the cen- 
turies, and will continue'as such. The greatest of men 
have had the habit of measuring themselves by him. It 
was said that when the Knights of King Arthur were 
inducted into the mystery of the Round Table, there 
rested upon each of them “a momentary likeness of 
the king.” So, men who entered into fellowship with 
Christ, came to reflect his character. Christ made 
manhood manly. 

Considerateness.— What were some of these traits 
which he pitted against the lower, and in favor of the 
higher life of man? Space does not permit considera- 
tion of all of them. But among them, surely, was con- 
siderateness. Probably none of Christ’s teachings has 
stood out more prominently than the one in which he 
urged people to be considerate one of another. The 
Golden Rule has become household speech in all Chris- 
tendom. Others, before and since his day, have doubt- 
lessly similarly perceived the need for considerateness. 
But when Jesus said it, the world was sure to hear. 
Slowly the Golden Rule has won the allegiance of men. 
Slowly but surely it is coming to be the measure for 
all humane relations. It should be noted that Jesus 
himself went beyond the demands of the Golden Rule. 
He was not simply as considerate of others as of him- 
self; he was more considerate of others. Himself “he 
spared not.” He freely forgave any wrong done him- 
self, but his indignation was kindled by wrongs done 


120 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


to others. It was his considerateness that caused his 
indignation. And from his considerateness, his en- 
thusiasm for forgiveness came. Jesus showed that 
“the brave are tender.” They have a heart. 

The period of chivalry in the Middle Ages had its 
follies and conceits. But at the core it was Christian. 
Its considerateness of womanhood has been exalted in 
poetry and legend and song. But-it could not stop with 
that. It brought that vague but valorous standard: 
“The honor of a gentleman,” echoed by Shakespeare 
in Macbeth: 


“T dare do all that may become a man; 
Who dares do more is none.” 


Christian chivalry cannot stay confined to a single 
realm. It is bound to affect whatsoever it touches. A 
man cannot be considerate of childhood and be brutal. 
He cannot be considerate of womanhood and be im- 
pure. He cannot be considerate of his fellows and 
then seek his own rights regardless of theirs. So it 
comes that, in our day, Christian men bring consider- 
ateness to industry and commerce, to education and 
government. All barriers to brotherhood are being 
broken down by them. 

Purity.—The world into which Jesus came was 
grossly immoral. Back in his day Plato had lamented 
the lusts by which the people were killing off their 
souls. Virtually all the great Greek and Roman writ- 
ers reveal to what depths of debasement men and 
women had gone. There is as much truth as poetry 
in Matthew Arnold’s lines, descriptive of those times: 


“On that hard pagan world disgust 
And secret lothing fell; 

Deep weariness and sated lust 
Made human life a hell.” 


MANHOOD 121 


In sad and solemn words the Epistle to the Romans 
describes the havoc impurity was working among men. 
“And such were some of you,” Paul wrote the Corin- 
thians. “But,” he added, as a happy afterthought, “‘ye 
are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the 
name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.” 
Contact with Christ made men clean. 

Byron, in his wildest year, wrote in a letter to Tom 
Moore, “Virtue, as I begin to see, is the only thing 
that will do in this damned world.” It is the only 
thing that will do to save this world from being damned 
in body and in soul. Christianity, from the start, set 
itself like flint against impurity. “In condemning a 
Christian woman to the procurer, rather than to the 
lions,’ wrote Tertullian, “you admitted that a taint 
on our purity is considered something more terrible 
than any punishment or any death.” This love of 
purity has wrought an inestimable boon upon the race. 
All we account dear in friendship and in our home is 
to be traced to it. This Christian cleanliness stands 
like a Gibraltar against the ever-recurring inroads of 
dust. And more. It moves men to deep compassion 
for the victims of vice. Ignatius Loyola said ‘“‘he 
would willingly give his life to hinder a day’s sin of 
one of these unfortunates,’ and Robertson of Brighton 
observed that his “blood ran to liquid fire” in indigna- 
tion against those whose selfishness debased woman- 
hood. Christianity has always believed that the soul 
should be master of the body, and that to use any 
person merely as a means is the sin of sins. The world 
is indebted to Christianity for that conception of chas- 
tity which makes manhood safe for womanhood and 
fit to lead childhood on. If sometimes Christendom 
mistook prudery for purity, it was only because it 
knew so well that impurity is the most effective method 


122 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


yet devised for spiritual suicide. Christianity has never 
let up in its fight on it. It never will. 


“A Man AFTER Gop’s Own HEART” 


Humility —Into the making of manhood humility 
has gone. ew things are more misunderstood. “Hu- 
mility,” said Mr. Ruskin, “‘is the first test of a truly 
great man.” “Blessed are the humble,” said Jesus, 
though the older versions obscured his saying by ren- 
dering his words, “Blessed are the meek.”’ But what 
is this humility that is a mark of manhood? The 
observations of Mr. Ruskin on this point will stand 
us in good stead. “I do not mean by humility doubt 
of his own power, or hesitation in speaking his opin- 
ions, but a right understanding of the relation between 
what he can do and say and the rest of the world’s 
doings and sayings. All great men not only know 
their business but usually know that they know it, and 
are not only right in their main opinions but they 
usually know that they are right in them, only they do 
not think much of themselves on that account. 
Arnolfo knows that he can build a good dome at 
Florence; Albert Durer writes calmly to one who has 
found fault with his work, ‘It cannot be done better’; 
Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a 
problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else; 
only they do not expect their fellow men, therefore, to 
fall down and worship them. They have a curious 
undersense of powerlessness, feeling that the power 
is not in them but through them, that they could 
not do or be anything else than God made them, and 
they see something divine and God-made in every other 
man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly 
merciful !””? 


*See The Manhood of the Master. 





MANHOOD 123 


“He humbled himself,’ the record tells us about 
Jesus. Those who have shared his fellowship have 
followed him in this. They have put more stress upon 
the things they had in common with others than upon 
those others lacked. Thus they have been breaking 
down “the master-ethic”’; the notion that a few inher- 
ently have the right to dominate. In the spirit of their 
Master they have,.in the words of one of the greatest 
of all Christians, said to those whom they encountered, 
“Not that we lord it over your faith—no, we cooperate 
for your joy.” 

Sincerity.—And Jesus has helped men to be sincere. 
“Men,” said Machiavelli, “are a sorry breed; they are 
thankless, fickle, false, greedy of gain; devoted to you 
while you are able to confer benefits upon them.” We 
have all heard it said that every man has his price. 
And this belief is more often implied than it is uttered. 
Preacher or judge, peasant or king, it is all merely a 
matter of finding out how much a man will take to 
sell his convictions or throttle his conscience. 

But Jesus believed that men could be “of unpur- 
chaseable stuff.”” He knew the spiritual power that is 
available to help men to resist the temptations to sell 
their souls. His viewpoint has been justified. When 
we think of the martyrs who have gone to the stake 
rather than to surrender their convictions, when we 
remember those who have endured persecution for 
principle, we know that his ideal was no idle dream. 
Jesus always stood for sincerity. He refused to “walk 
delicately.”” He spoke right out to speak out right. 
It got him into trouble. It has gotten many a follower 
of his into trouble, but it has given us a world in which 
sincerity and truth are increasingly coming to be 
prized. 

Emerson rejoiced in any man who “taking both 


124 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


reputation and life in his hand, will, with perfect ur- 
banity, dare the gibbet and the mob, by the absolute 
truth of his speech and the rectitude of his behavior.” 
“Blessed,” said Jesus, “are they which are persecuted 
for righteousness’ sake!’ Does it seem like the hard- 
est possible way to blessedness—this paying the price 
of sincerity in pain? Yet multitudes, following Jesus, 
have found no way more direct. 


“He’s TRUE To Gop WHo’s TRUE TO MAN” 


Service.—The word “servant” has often been re- 
marked upon. At first it was a title of disdain. No- 
body wanted to belong to the servant class. You 
might call men servants of God, provided it was under- 
stood that this did not therefore make them servants 
of men. It was the fashion to sign a letter ‘Your 
obedient servant,” but it was simply a fashion. Men 
did not expect to have that taken seriously. But to-day 
the word is coveted. It is a title of distinction. Men 
glory in it. They ask no greater boon than a chance 
to be of service. Religion once set out to make men 
servile, to give them that “slave-morality” that 
Nietzsche so despised. But things have come to a 
different pass. Religion now sets out to make men 
serviceable, so that they too may say, “I came, not to 
be ministered unto, but to minister.” 

Jesus told his followers centuries ago, “I am among 
you as one that serveth.”’ He spoke with sparkling 
eyes of “the work which thou gavest me to do.” He 
was “obedient unto death.’ His was not simply “serv- 
ice where service is lost in delight.’’ It cost him much. 
Yet he was sure that life can only be filled full in pur- 
poseful living. He has lifted myriads of men out of 
the slough of petty and self-centered living into whole- 


MANHOOD 125 


hearted effort to bring the realm of God to earth. The 
privilege of having their fellow men work for them 
has faded into insignificance alongside the privilege of 
working for their fellow men. Charles Wesley’s 
prayer has been theirs: 


“To serve the present age 
My calling to fulfill; 
O, may it all my powers engage 
To do my Master’s will.” 


They have Jesus to thank for this prayer! 

Love.—And the real reason why they have served 
men is that they have learned to love Christ. He has 
proved irresistibly attractive to them. They have treas- 
ured his words. They have “tried his works to do.” 
Their minds have been full of him. They have caught 
his spirit. They have made his cause their own, and 
have written his name on their hearts. They have 
come to know his Father. The lover of their souls 
has made them lovers of souls. Hence they have not 
been content simply to have in themselves these Chris- 
tian characteristics we have been thinking of. They 
have incorporated them in law, education, and custom, 
and great movements have found in them their inspira- 
tion and their strength. In the doing of all of this 
they have found abiding peace and increasing kinship 
to the Christ they loved. 

So they have said: “Who shall separate us from the 
love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or per- 
secution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 
. . . Nay, in all these things we are more than con- 
querors through him that loved us. For we are per- 
suaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
_ things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other 


126 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of 
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 


For Discussion 


1. Look up the story of the founding of the Young 
Men’s Christian Association. 

2. Does Christian manhood call for a strong sense of 
justice? What is a sense of justice? 

3. Has money any relationship to manhood? If so, 
what kind? . 

4. Read the “seven words’ of Jesus upon the cross. 
Which characteristics of manhood do you find in 
them? Which one was outstanding? 

5. Are not the qualities that make true manhood exactly 
the same as those that make true womanhood? Do 
they need to differ? 

6. How can young men best help young women to be 
Christian ? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Fosdick, Harry Emerson, The Manhood of the Master, 
Chap. I. 

Versteeg, John M., Christ and the Problems of Youth, 
Chap. ITT. 

Glover, T. R., Jesus in the Experience of Men, Chap. 
XI. 


‘CHAPTER XIil 
THE FAMILY 


CHRISTIANITY has much at stake in the family. 
Until family life is Christianized the world cannot be- 
come Christian, for the family is the most important 
of human institutions. It is the cradle of our civiliza- 
tion. Christianity has done much for it. It has made 
for its purity, permanence, and power. Christians 
therefore are deeply concerned that it shall be both 
maintained and improved. 


THE INFLUENCE OF CHRIST 


Monogamy.— Lucretius, deep-dyed materialist 
though he was, dated “the first true refinement” of 
the human race from “chaste single marriage.” All 
sorts of experiments have been made in human his- 
tory. Promiscuity, polygamy, polyandry, and the like, 
have all had their chance at the race. As the race has 
come up these all have gone down. They have been 
weighed in the balance and found wanting in civiliz- 
ing power. ‘This, and not the behest of priest or po- 
tentate, explains why the race has resorted, and increas- 
ingly is resorting, to monogamy. It is humanity’s 
highest spiritual attainment in the relation of the sexes 
and in the relation of the sexes to society. The peo- 
ples among whom it has prevailed have come to the 
front in the world. Both material and spiritual lead- 
ership have fallen into their hands. 

Christ and monogamy.—Divorce is by no means a 
modern problem. Long before Jesus came the Jewish 


127 


128 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


rabbis had been struggling with it. A century before 
Christ’s birth the president of the synagogue had pro- 
mulgated the ‘‘Kethuboth,” or “law of the marriage 
deed,” in the hope that thus divorce might be brought 
to a halt. But there was no stopping it. It continued 
a problem to Jesus’ day. And in our day it is still a 
question of large dimensions. 

If you are at all familiar with the New Testament, 
you will know that in his discourses Jesus generally 
confined himself to the unfolding of principles. But 
he went out of his way to speak a good word for the 
sanctity of the marriage ties. He stood up for their 
permanence. Unfortunately, the gospel records of his 
utterances concerning divorce permit of some debate; 
but all who have read them are agreed that they were 
intended to assert the integrity of marriage. He quoted 
with approval a passage from the book of Genesis, 
ascribing monogamy to the will of God. He perceived 
that it was not enough for marriage to be legal; he in- 
sisted that it ought to be spiritual as well. His attitude 
and words have gone far toward bringing monogamy 
to its best. 

Christ and the family.—Jesus seems to have thought 
of the family as a sort of replica of the spiritual order 
of things. He referred to God as a Parent and spoke 
of himself as God’s Son. And he missed no oppor- 
tunity to stress the significance of the child. He went 
so far as to say that the child ought to come first in 
all our considerations. That was an unheard-of thing 
to do in his day. He put the child in the midst of 
men’s minds. His deep respect for woman made the 
Christian family possible. His ennobling influence 
made of fathers men who had both his mind and his 
spirit. 

Nothing on earth is more sublime than the Christian 


THE FAMILY 129 


home. Here people are not simply ushered into the 
world, but they are introduced to those social and 
spiritual values that make life glorious. Here love 
comes to its best in considerateness and service. Here 
affection tempers authority and democracy gets its 
chance. Here, without outside interference, an em- 
bryo realm of God is built. Here it is no strain to 
be religious—it would be a strain not to be! Whoever 
has known a Christian home will wish that all homes 
might be Christian. 


THE SERVICE OF THE CHURCH 


The church and the family.—‘“The Cotter’s Satur- 
day Night,” written by Robert Burns, is the classic 
illustration of the grace of a Christian home. This 
grace has often been commented upon in other realms 
than that of literature. All the more surprising, 
therefore, that the church should not always have 
recognized this. Yet the early and the medieval 
church worked the home great injury. Some of 
this, to be sure, was inevitable. Christianity nat- 
urally caused a deal of domestic disturbance. Docu- 
ments coming down from the early church tell of chil- 
dren who left their parents, wives who forsook their 
husbands, sons whom fathers disowned, daughters 
whom parents cast out, and many a wife divorced, all 
because the Christian faith had been embraced. But 
most of the injury was caused by unchristian ideas. 
Among the pagan conceptions that soon obtained a 
strong hold on the church was belief that the body is 
corrupt and that the soul’s safety lies in suppressing 
all of its desires. Hence marriage was looked at 
askance and celibacy was exalted. It was thought that 
people could not hope for perfection at home; if they 
cared supremely for their souls, they were to tear 


130 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


themselves away from it. In order to place the priests 
more completely at the service of the church Gregory 
VII imposed celibacy upon them. But, as if to offset 
this, the church, for centuries, prohibited the separa- 
tion of husband and wife for any cause. 

The church of to-day does well to try to make up 
for the mistakes the church has made in the past. Tak- 
ing its clue from Jesus, it is teaching that the family 
ranks high in the purpose of God. The church is en- 
gaged in a struggle, not, as some seem to think, to keep 
the family what it is, but to make it all it ought to be. 

The forces opposing family life—Many things to- 
day threaten to disrupt the home. To-day, as always, 
attacks are being made upon it by those who labor for 
its destruction. Every so often some novelist or 
dramatist will inform you, in words tremulous with 
the sense of discovery, that it is high time that the 
sanctions of marriage be destroyed, and that we put 
in their place the scheme which he champions. It is 
always sobering go remember, with all this ado, that 
nothing new is proposed. It has all been tried out! 
That is why these attacks are not likely to have much 
force. We are not going back to the jungle, and the 
race is not inclined to go back on its gains. Changes 
in family life will doubtless come in the future, as they 
have in the past! We may count on the spirit of Christ 
to see to it that whatever changes come will be for the 
better spiritually. 


THE PRESENT PROBLEMS 


A different family life.—But there are more subtle 
dangers than open attacks upon it. Regard what 
changed conditions meet the family in this land. For 
these industrialism is chiefly responsible. A century 
ago the average home was also the center of employ- 


THE FAMILY I3I 


ment. If a man had anything to make, he made it at 
home. Large factories could not have existed with- 
out rapid means of locomotion for the distribution 
and disposal of their products. A large family was 
an economic asset. If there were more mouths to feed, 
there were also more hands to toil. Economic pro- 
duction centered in the household. Everybody worked 
with father! There was real incentive to work in the 
knowledge that the whole family reaped its benefits. 

To-day members of the same family work at entirely 
different things. The occupational interests are often 
widely diverse. The unity of interest, economic at 
least, is shattered in most homes. The elimination of 
economic interests from the home removed one factor 
that contributed much toward its permanency. One 
of the blackest sins of our social order is that so many 
people have been forced by it into conditions of toil 
that tend to destroy home life. The housing problem 
also enters in. Large populations herded together in 
congested quarters makes neither for decency nor for 
family permanency. 

New views.—The life of the family is also threat- 
ened by changed conceptions. Servile obedience to 
parental commands is going out of fashion. Women 
no longer feel that the home is the only realm in which 
they ought to be at home. Many men develop so many 
outside interests that they devote to the home neither 
time nor thought enough to make a go of it. Worse 
still, few people have deeply pondered its significance. 
The family was the mold in which Jesus cast his con- 
ception of the kingdom of God. To help people to 
realize why Jesus thought in such high terms of it is 
to render a signal piece of Christian service. 

Divorce.—If for the next fifty years the divorce 
rate gains on the marriage rate as it has for the past 


132 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


twenty, disaster is inevitable. Not even uniform di- 
vorce laws, good as they may be in themselves, will 
do to stem the tide. We shall have to determine the 
causes and begin to work on them. There is abundant 
evidence that many are permitted to marry who are 
emotionally insane and inherently deficient. We shall 
have to put a stop to that if we wish to survive. 

Much friction comes from the financial as well as 
the nervous strain of too large families, and from kin- 
dred difficulties. These will have to be frankly faced, 
and faced in the spirit of Jesus. Many young people 
marry who have ideas and ideals concerning matri- 
mony that are totally remiss. To correct these is a 
task to which Christians must give themselves. They 
must be made to see that marriage is not just a scheme 
to make two people happy; it has soctal significance. 
Not the wife or the husband but the child and society 
must primarily be considered. The church must help 
people to see that a common moral purpose must aug- 
ment personal attraction if marriage is to hold good. 
The best antidote to divorce is a clean and clear view 
of marriage. 

Religion in the home.—One product of “foreign 
missions” is the remaking of the world’s homes. In 
this respect the church’s work is showing some star- 
tlingly splendid results. But, unless Christian nations 
Christianize their family life, “the nations that sit in 
darkness” will fail to see the “great light.” Fitzgerald 
once asked Tennyson, as they were looking at a picture 
of Goethe, “What is wanting in his face?” And Tenny- 
son replied, “The divine’! It is this that is wanting 
in too many families. A home in which God is at 
home—that is the Christian ideal. Hence the friendly 
discussion of religion and whole-souled family worship 
will go far toward providing the environment in which 


THE FAMILY 133 


“the great Triad—Father, Mother, Child’ can come 
to its best. 


Regard what Christ has done toward lifting human 
life. He touched the cradle and made childhood sa- 
cred; he hallowed womanhood and brought it to 
freedom and newness of life; he put his seal on men 
and manhood became sublime. He set the family “in 
the paths of peace,” and made family life “a thing of 
beauty and a joy forever.” 


For DISCUSSION 


1. Do you think that school, club, and church life inter- 
fere with the success of the home? 

2. Does it make much difference what sort of houses 
families ive in? Do better houses always mean 
better homes? If not, why should we still be con- 
cerned about proper housing ? 

3. How can young people contribute toward making home 
life noble? 

4. Is the old commandment, “Honor thy father and 
thy mother” still binding on us? How can we 
honor dishonorable parents? 

5. What do you think of the family altar? Of family 
worship? How would you like to see the latter 
conducted? 

6. If your family is not Christian, what can you do to 
Christianize it? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Hodgkin, Henry T., The Christian Revolution, Chap. VI. 

Langdale, John W., Citizenship and Moral Reform, Chap. 
IV. 

Shillito, Edward, Christian Citizenship, Chap. VI. 


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4 ute " 2 ith, 4 r Vb iy yy ath vy * 


mt ay Us ie We sae, F 
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PART IV. 


CHRISTIANITY AT WORK ON LIVING 
CONDITIONS 


Ye that have faith to look with fearless eyes 
Beyond the tragedy of a world at strife, 
And know that out of death and night shall rise 
The dawn of ampler life: 
Rejoice, whatever anguish rend the heart, 
That God has given you the priceless dower 
To live in these great times and have your part 
In Freedom’s crowning hour, 
That ye may tell your sons who see the light 
High in the heavens—their heritage to take— 
“IT saw the powers of darkness take their flight; 
I saw the morning break.” 
—Found on the body of an Australian soldier. 





* Reprinted from The World’s Great Religious Poetry, Caroline 
M. Hill, The Macmillan Company, publishers. Reprinted by per- 
mission. 


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hz ; wie hea rf % Waser, ‘ 4) i ide ‘ , . rae . ‘ } pe 
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MIRC) a 


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a as + tI : f L i y Ny A : 





CHAPTER XIV 
POVERTY 


JoHN BricuHt’s young wife had passed away. Cob- 
den called to see him. After some words of condo- 
lence, he said to Bright: “There are thousands of 
homes in England at this moment where wives, moth- 
ers, and children are dying of hunger.” Then and 
there, Bright and Cobden resolved to unite their ef- 
forts to better the conditions of the poor. 


THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 


Hearing our call.—The call that comes to us is not 
that of a single nation, but of all mankind. We live 
in a favored land; only five or six millions of us are 
compelled to live on or below the starvation level! 
This is a small ratio compared to the rest of the world. 
The stark specter of starvation has always haunted 
the multitudes. It still does! It is an open and se- 
rious question whether the majority of the people now 
on earth ever really know what it means to have their 
hunger satisfied. 

Christianity came as good news to the poor. “It is 
alien to our character,’ said Constantine, “to allow 
anyone to perish of famine,” and so he sought to give 
systematic relief to the poor. But the text suggesting 
these words was not worked very hard. Another text 
was. Indeed, this one was overworked. It made his- 
tory—worse than it should have been: “Ye have the 
poor with you always.” The word “always” in this 
text was offered in proof that Christ recognized and 


137 


138 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


accepted poverty as an inevitable part of the divine 
scheme. To-day the attempt to wrest this meaning 
from this text is being abandoned. We are more in- 
clined to pick out another word for emphasis. We 
would let the word “ye” stand out: “Ye have the poor 
with you always.” We prefer to make it refer to folks 
who are so blighting in sympathy and soul that who- 
ever and whatever comes into their vicinity is forth- 
with impoverished. | 
Getting the meaning straight.—‘Poverty,”’ said 
the late Canon Barnett, “is not, as the survival of 
medieval teaching seems to suggest, a source of bless- 
ing. Conditions have changed. The want of money 
did not hinder Saint Francis and his followers from 
making friends with the flowers and the birds, from 
enjoying natural beauty, and from having leisure and 
silence; or, in the society of their fellows, of learning 
the best of what men knew. Poverty cut them off 
from the deceitfulness of riches, but was not so press- 
ing as hourly to add to ‘the cares of life.’ The poor in 
pocket could then claim the blessings of the poor in 
spirit. But poverty to-day has far different effects. If 
it is still very hard for a rich man to see the way into 
the kingdom of heaven, it is almost impossible for a 
poor man to enjoy the fullness of life.”* Let us re- 
member that poverty, like many another word, is used 
with varying meanings. The poverty Jesus advocated 
meant “‘the lack of nothing”’ essential to wholesome life. 
Does poverty bring blessings?—‘Poverty,” said 
Mohammed, in his holier days, “is my glory.” The 
Fakirs and Dervishes of Mohammedanism are under 
the vow of poverty. So are the Brahman mendicants, 
Saint Francis thought “poverty the way of salvation, 


_* Edward Shillito, Christian Citizenship. Reprinted by permis- 
sion of Longmans, Green & Co., publishers. 


POVERTY 139 


the nurse of humility, and the root of perfection.” One 
of the fundamental rules of the Franciscans and Do- 
minicans was that their members must possess no 
property but be wholly dependent on alms. Various 
Popes later relaxed the strictness of this; some monas- 
teries and convents became very rich. You must al- 
ways distinguish between this voluntary poverty and 
the poverty by which the lives of multitudes has been 
crushed. The former was chosen by a few; the latter 
was forced upon the many. 

The blessings of poverty are often recited. If with 
“poverty” you mean the absence of wealth, the frugal 
existence where character, not cash, is the coin of the 
realm, we can all agree. The “honest poverty” im- 
mortalized by Robert Burns is cause for just pride: 


“What though on hamely fare we dine, 
Wear hoddin grey, an’ a’ that; 
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 
A Man’s a Man for a’ that: 


“Pora that,.an'.a that, 
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that; 
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor, 
Is King o’ men for a’ that.” 


This is fine poetry, but it should never be used to throw 
dust in the eyes of people who ought to see this issue 
as it is. It is not a disgrace to be poor, but it is an 
injustice to be so poor that one cannot hope for full- 
ness of life for oneself or one’s family. 

The church faces poverty.—The world into which 
Christianity came knew bitter want. The book of Acts 
and the Epistles in the New Testament reveal the con- 
cern the first Christians had for the poor in their 
midst. Their methods apparently left much to be de- 
sired, but their spirit was that of the Master. His 


140 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


pronounced intention to bring good news to the poor 
had not been wasted on them. 

The attempts of governments to alleviate poverty 
are of recent origin, as are the vastly organized char- 
ities of our day. During long periods the church was 
the only organization to practice charity. It had not 
thought to check up its methods or to measure and 
watch its results. But it early learned to systematize 
its work. The Franciscans even established lending 
houses, where loans were advanced with little or no 
interest to people who would otherwise have been vic- 
timized by unscrupulous usurers. 

Charity.—Christianity responded to poverty with 
charity. It accounted almsgiving an outstanding vir- 
tue. The early leaders went upon the theory that the 
poor had the first claim upon the church. One of the 
most famous of them, Chrysostom, at one time sup- 
ported seven thousand from church funds. There was 
nothing niggardly in their treatment of the poor. One 
did not have to be a Christian to get aid. We have it 
on the witness of the Emperor Julian that heathens as 
well as the faithful received alms from the church. 
The church was liberal in its liberality. The early 
church, moreover, kept the motives for almsgiving 
pure. Love for one’s fellow men was the chief in- 
centive. 

Merit.—But Tertullian and others began to teach 
differently. They said that almsgiving brought spir- 
itual gain to the giver, in the sense that it was a work 
of merit, by which one advanced the interest of one’s 
own soul. It counted to one’s credit on the ledger of 
God. Charity thus became selfish; alms came to be an 
investment, not in the poor, but for one’s own safety 
in the life to come. In similar or altered fashion this 
theory exists otherwhere. “Remove the beggars!” ex- 


POVERTY : 14] 


claimed the Buddhist abbot, when someone asked him 
why the church did not care for these sufferers. ‘That 
would never do. Kwannon [the goddess of mercy | 
would be angry. ‘How could we worship her accept- 
ably if there were no beggars to whom to give alms?’’* 

It was not easy, even after the Reformation, to get 
rid of this theory. Jeremy Taylor, in his classic de- 
votional book, Holy Living, which exerted a wide in- 
fluence on religious thinking, took up the cudgels 
against it. He insisted that the giver ought to acquire 
“a true sense of the calamity of his brother,” and that 
“those in want” should receive “in proportion to their 
need.” But William Law, in his Serious Call, a book 
which had a large place in the spiritual history of John 
Wesley, contradicted him. Slowly but surely the 
church has veered around to Taylor’s viewpoint. The 
whole business of charity is now regarded from the 
viewpoint of the recipient. For charity has hurt many 
it was intended to help. Investigations have demon- 
strated that indiscriminate charity makes for pauper- 
ism. We do not always lend a hand with a “hand- 
out.’”’ It has come to be the business of experts to see 
that our gifts shall help and not hinder those they are 
meant to bless. They are making clear to us that the 
best charity we can give is work. 


THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM 
The charity of Christians.—Followers of Jesus 


could not remain on speaking terms with their con- 
sciences if they failed to do what they could do to les- 
sen the misery to which poverty subjects many. Hence 
almost every church has its “fund for the needy.” 
Hence church people, in large numbers, support and 


*See The Religions of Mankind, Edmund D. Soper. The 
Abingdon Press. 





142 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


direct charities. Make all the allowance you can for 
those who engage in charity without professing Chris- 
tianity. It would then still be true that the bulk of the 
aid extended to the poor comes from those who are 
Christian in character and, so, in ideals. Like Alfred 
Toynbee they see the poor “in the presence of God... . 
as heirs of immortality.” 

The relief of poverty——Christians do well to fa- 
miliarize themselves with any attempts that have been, 
or are being made, to relieve or to remedy poverty. 
Those who have the interest of the poor at heart ought 
to understand at least the general proposals of Com- 
munism and Socialism, which has been called the prod- 
igal son of Christianity. They should be conversant 
with such recent attempts to relieve the poor as widows’ 
pensions, health insurance, old-age pensions, and na- 
tional efforts to “stabilize” employment. They should 
see to it that no housing system is permitted which 
does not give major thought to the future generation, 
and guarantee those decencies and advantages without 
which no house can hope to be a home. It used to be 
a sign of piety to say that the way to take a man out 
of the slums was to take the slums out of the man. 
There is something in that. But of late it is being re- 
garded at least as pious to get rid of the slum itself. 
The battle against the slums is a vital contribution 
toward the family problem, and all Christians ought 
to take an eager interest in “town-planning” or other 
schemes for the better housing of the poor. 

Getting down to bed-rock.—The conviction is 
growing, however, that most of these efforts evade 
rather than correct the problem of poverty. We must 
come to grips with it at its source. Poverty used to be 
attributed quite generally to laziness and intemper- 
ance. But the evidence is preponderant that poverty 


POVERTY 143 


is not, in the main, the outcome of personal character- 
istics. Sickness, the death of the bread-winner, old 
age, unemployment, casual employment—these are 
some of the factors that enter in. A far deeper cause 
is that “five out of every six children are born to no 
assured place in our industrial system.” The chief 
difficulty lies in those methods of living we usually 
designate as the social order. These must be Chris- 
tianized if poverty is to go. 

What Christianity has to say about poverty.— 
And go it must! Few things are clearer in the teach- 
ings of Christ than that it is the will of God that life 
shall be made full. Can you think of better news to 
the poor than that there is no spiritual justification for 
the existence of poverty? Anything that crushes life 
must go; only that which lifts life may remain. It is 
ours, then, not simply to relieve poverty, but to 
abolish it. 

But how shall we go about it? First, by straight 
thinking. To remedy “those derangements of the 
business world which bring as their consequences poy- 
erty and the need of its relief’ we must recognize that 
the trouble roots “in the larger problem of the indus- 
trial order, and the most unquestionable and effective 
philanthropy is to be found in industrial justice, prog- 
ress, and peace.’”’ Poverty will be destroyed when not 
only the individual but also the social order are Chris- 
tianized. 

In the next place, it will take heroic effort. The best 
brains and the ripest experience ought to be brought 
to this task. Depend upon it—the moment you attack 
entrenched greed you will have a stiff fight on your 
hands. Men and women must be found who have the 
courage to challenge poverty rather than to com- 
promise with it. There is one star by which they may 


144 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


safely go. It is this: the will of God is practicable. It 
can be worked. If it is the will of God that life shall 
be, not impoverished, but enriched, then it is ours to 
find the way out of poverty. For a way out there 
must be! 


For Discussion 


1. It would be interesting if a member of the class would 
report what is the average income of an American 
family of five, and what is considered a “‘living 
standard,’ an adequate income in your community 
for a decent living. 

2. When Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ was 
he referring to poverty or the means of living? Is 
there any connection between the two? 

3. What was the truth in the merit theory of charity? 

4. Estimate the amount of poverty in the world. How 
does poverty effect the spiritual status of a nation? 
Do abjectly poor peoples make for freedom and 
democracy ? 

5. Would you call it evangelism when missionaries and 
others train people in famine-stricken areas in the 
use of modern implements? Does poverty aid reli- 
gion? Is it a contribution to missionary advance? 

6. In which sense is it good for one to be poor? When 
does the “blessing” of poverty prove to be a curse? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Ward, Harry F., Poverty and Wealth, Chap. X. 

Langdale, J. W., Citizenship and Moral Reform, Chap. V. 

Versteeg, John M., The Deeper Meaning of Stewardship, 
Chap. VII. 


“CHAPTER XV 
EDUCATION 


“JERUSALEM was destroyed,’ so said the rabbis, 
“because the instruction of the young was neglected.” 
Jesus had other reasons than this historic one for wish- 
ing to bring the light of knowledge to human lives. 
He considered it to be the will of God that every hu- 
man being should progress. Folks cannot sit up with 
such an idea as this for many centuries without some- 
thing happening. What happened was this: ignorance 
died and education grew. It took a long time, to be 
sure, but that it should happen at last was inevitable. 
Had not the Master said, “Ye shall know the truth, 
and the truth shall make you free’? 


IGNORANCE 
Illiteracy. — 


“There was a wight who such a scholar was 
That he the letters in a book could read.” 


That ability to read should ever have been cause for 
comment seems strange to us. Yet not until public- 
school systems became prevalent did the majority of 
people, even in Christian lands, learn how to read and 
write, or form even a bowing acquaintance with arith- 
metic. By the time Christ came to earth Greek 
thought had for some time been traveling over the 
Roman highways, but it never traveled far enough to 
reach the mass of men. Slaves who could read or 
recite were at a premium, but ability to read and write 
was not a requisite for citizenship. Charlemagne in 


145 


146 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


800 was crowned emperor of all Romans, yet all he 
was able to do was to sign his name! In this he sur- 
passed his contemporaries. [Illiteracy has all through 
the years barred the way of progress. It has come 
down to our times. When our country was drafting 
young men for the World War the examinations re- 
vealed an unsuspected ratio of illiteracy. It is esti- 
mated that, throughout the world, only about one out of 
every three inhabitants is able to read and write. Signs 
are not wanting, however, that this proportion will 
speedily be changed. The work of the missionaries and 
the contact of belated nations with the Western world 
will have this result. The world threatens to become 
literate. When all read, many will think, For many 
of us, just now, the danger exists that we shall sub- 
stitute reading for thinking. As the old-time mystic 
put it, “It is only as we think well that we serve God 
in the inner court.” 


RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 


The church and the school.—Jesus himself has 
justly been called the Master Teacher. His was a na- 
tion that for long had set great store by teaching. The 
honored name in Judaism was “rabbi,” which means 
“teacher.” Many master minds, of whom Paul was 
the first, were attracted to Jesus. Some of these ex- 
hibited rare intellectual prowess. With people like 
these about there was nothing to do but to stress edu- 
cation. It was most timely that this was done. Decay 
was at the vitals of the Greek and Roman cultures. 
Christian education won the day for mankind. Out 
of its humble beginnings present-day education has 
come. It is difficult to overestimate the service the 
church rendered during the first four centuries of the 
Christian era. 


EDUCATION: 147 


Unfortunately, the enthusiasm for education waned. 
To be sure, an occasional church council still spoke out 
for it: “Let the priests . . . hold schools in order that 
all the children intrusted to them, can receive the first 
notion of letters.”? But the practice fell into disuse. 
Where it continued, it reached but a few. Only the 
privileged secured some education. The masses re- 
mained untouched. 

The monasteries serve.—“Christianity,” said Mr. 
Chesterton, “was the one path across the Dark Ages 
that was not dark.” Had he said, “Not totally dark,” 
he would have come nearer the facts. In brutal and 
ignorant days learning was sheltered and slightly pro- 
moted in convents and monasteries. Manuscripts, in- 
cluding those of the classics, were laboriously copied 
and bound by their occupants. This work, which 
meant so much to succeeding ages, brought them 
neither fame nor gain. A deep consecration kept them 
at their tasks. They were comforted with such coun- 
sel as that of Thomas a Kempis: “Do not trouble your- 
self at the fatigue of your work, for God, who is the 
source of every good and just labor, will give the re- 
ward; . . . and as he who gives a glass of cold water 
does not lose his reward, so he who gives forth the 
living water of wisdom will receive more surely his 
recompense in heaven.” Popular education owes 
much to a French Christian, Jean Baptiste de La Salle, 
whose fraternities, The Ignorantines, were pledged to 
instruct free of charge the children of the poor. Back 
in the twelfth century the first university, that of Paris, 
developed from a cathedral school, and from that, in 


* Reprinted from Gesta Christi, by C. Loring Brace, by permis- 
sion of the publishers, George H. Doran Company. 
* Ibid. 


148 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


turn, Oxford University came. Higher education 
came by way of the church. 


MAKING EDUCATION RELIGIOUS 


The public-school system.—Robert Raikes and his 
friends strove to secure national systems of education. 
For their pains they were showered with calumny and 
hate. It is too much to expect that there should have 
been no opposition to the public-school idea here. In 
1671, Governor Berkeley said: “I thank God there are 
no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not 
have these hundred years; for learning has brought 
disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and 
printing has divulged them and libels against the best 
government. God keep us from both!” It is a far 
cry from this to the words of Washington in his Fare- 
well Address: “Promote them as an object of primary 
importance, institutions for the general diffusion of 
knowledge.” The principle of free public education 
was not assured until about the middle of the nine- 
teenth century. To our country goes the credit for 
establishing tax-supported nonsectarian schools, to pro- 
mote the common good and to “serve as the instrument 
of democracy.”’ The welfare of a republic depends, in 
large part, upon the education of its citizens. The 
nations that have believed, with Christ, that all should 
have fullness of life, have come to be the leaders of 
the world. , 

The public school and the church.—Protestants 
hold tenaciously to the principle of the public school. 
They deem it a grievous mistake to segregate chil- 
dren according to the religion of their parents. They 
believe that such a procedure jeopardizes democracy. 
They consider it inconsistent that members of a democ- 
racy should be trained in the schools of a hierarchy. 


EDUCATION 149 


They believe that church and state should be kept sep- 
arate. They believe, just as ardently, that church and 
state should never be separated! Cooperation rather 
than coordination is the need. These two must work 
hand in glove. Religion was taken out of the school in 
the name of religious liberty. Religion is now getting 
back into the school in the name of religious justice. 
For, as someone has said, the soul of education is the 
education of the soul. Education in the public schools 
is coming to be a sort of epitome of life. Religion is 
easily discredited in the minds of the children if the 
school makes no place for it. As the school concerns 
itself with an increasing proportion of the interests of 
young life, it cannot consistently keep out that which 
is most vital of all. Hence there has come the move- 
ment for “week-day religious education,” which finds 
further impetus in the fact that the provisions for reli- 
gious education now made in the church schools are 
not commensurate with the importance of the matter. 


EXPANDING EDUCATION 


“They that sit in darkness.’—And yet, it is still, 
as Mr. H. G. Wells has said, “a race between education 
and catastrophe” in this world. For multitudes as yet 
lead benighted lives. They must have light and lead- 
ing, or there is no hope for the world. It is well-known 
to-day that wherever missionaries go, there the schools 
come. Besides, the Bible has been translated into 
seven hundred and seventy languages and dialects. 
Yet of the bulk of the population of the world it 
must still be confessed that their ignorance is deep- 
seated. 

Consider their ignorance of physical well-being. 
Millions know little or nothing of hygiene or sanita- 
tion; if they did, they would lack the means to make 


150 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


these effective. There are whole sections with large 
populations where a competent physician is as rare as 
a billionaire. But why go this far afield? Are there 
not all about you folks to whom a toothbrush is still 
a novelty and to whom an honest bath would be the 
event of a lifetime? Rest assured of this: unless we 
build better bodies and secure superior minds by the 
million on this earth, the dream that Jesus dreamed 
until he was driven to a cross cannot come true. Do 
you wonder that Christians devoutly say at holy com- 
munion time: “The body of our Lord Jesus Christ 
... preserve thy soul and body unto... life’? 
And the church is the body of Christ. Where Jesus 
has come, clean blood has come! 

Consider ignorance of the means of livelihood. Mul- 
titudes all over the world can scarcely eke out an ex- 
istence, yet they work hard and long; they do not know, 
or do not know how to utilize, modern implements; 
they have little leisure, little recreation, and most of 
that none too good; the doors that lead to life are sel- 
dom opened to them. Jesus’ way of living has in- 
variably led to a better way of making a living. 

Spaciousness of mind.—How few of them are able 
to think in world-terms! Indeed, not many of them 
think in nation-wide terms. They live in isolation, 
with means of communication and transportation few. 
One of the finest fruits—if not the very finest—of 
Christianity is cosmic interpretation; in other words, 
thinking in terms of universal factors and facts. Jesus 
was always troubled about men’s failure thus to think. 
He complained to his disciples, “You do not think 
like God.” The percentage of those who think this 
way is exceedingly small. Yet they exert an influence 
far in excess of their numbers. No wonder, for they 
think God’s thoughts after him! 


EDUCATION 151 


One might thus enumerate item by item the knowl- 
edge people lack. But a deeper fact remains to be 
noted. We must not mistake knowledge for intellect, 
things known with. the capacity for knowing. And 
intelligence—the power of association and discrim- 
ination between facts—is a still higher state than in- 
tellect. When we have replaced ignorance with knowl- 
edge we are still unprofitable servants unless, “with 
all our getting, we get wisdom.” 

Here is the most vital problem of all! “Saint Simon 
on a pillar all the day, thinking of God and man: a 
curious way to spend one’s life, we say. But what of 
men who spend their lives in trying to get as much for 
as little as they can? That is, it seems to me, more 
tragic than being a saint against the sky.”* A life 
such as here portrayed is, in the truest sense, a life 
ignorant of life. It is spiritual ignorance that must be 
dispelled. Goethe hinted this same truth when he 
said that the object of education ought to be the forma- 
tion of tastes rather than the communication of 
knowledge. 


A Victorious CHRISTIANITY 


The power of Christ.—Christianity is an old hand 
at this business. It has always brought men “out of 
the darkness into the marvelous light.’”’ It came “‘to 
bring life . . . to light.” Right nobly has it done so. 
Christianity has been mighty to the casting down of 
ignorance in all of its phases. And it continues so. 

Let us bear in mind what Silvester Horne wrote a 
generation ago: “It does us good at times to sit and 
ponder how slowly, but how surely, Christ has edu- 
cated conscience and revealed his mind and will to this 


* Alexander Meiklejohn, Freedom and the College. Reprinted 
by permission of The Century Company. 


152 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


world; the thought is profoundly impressive. Slavery 
is condoned and defended by Christian people so long; 
but when the final impeachment is made, and the last 
blow is struck, it is the Christian who leads. When 
any institution is once fairly and decisively condemned 
by the Christian conscience, I will not give you many 
years’ purchase for it, though it may stand intrenched 
in centuries of privilege and vested rights. It may 
spread itself as a green bay tree, but it will soon be 
cut down when the ax of Christian conviction is laid 
to its roots. That is very suggestive of the power of 
Christ. And yet—this culture of saints! Is it not the 
greatest evidence of all of Christ’s authority, and his 
_ authority in every age and every land? I want to see the 
philosophy, or science, or cult, or religion that can do 
such marvels and make such men. The fact is, we have 
seen and known what Christ Jesus can do and does do; 
and, as has been well said, ‘until we find his fellow,’ 
he is deserving of loyalty, and trust, and praise with- 
out end.” 


For Discussion 


1. Do working conditions and living conditions the world 
over make for ignorance? Can the right kind of 
labor educate? Which kind? How? (Let some 
member of the class bring in and read Edwin Mark- 
ham’s “The Man with the Hoe.’’) 

2. What is the meaning of the word “disciples”? Should 
Christianity make men teachable? Should it nor- 
mally create within them a desire to be taught? 

3. It has been said that education is a matter for the 
entire man. What do you think is the meaning of 
this statement ? 

4. State the difference between religious education and 
education that is religious. Do we need both? 

5. Should there be colleges under church auspices as well 


EDUCATION 153 


as State-supported institutions of higher learning? 
What is the difference between them? 

6. Are most of the people in the United States spiritually 
ignorant? If so, how can this be remedied? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Foakes-Jackson, F. J., Studies in the Life of the Early 
Church, Chap. X. 

Betts, George H., The New Program of Religious Educa- 
tion. 

Snowden, James H., The Meaning of Education. 


CHAPTER XVI 
LABOR 


Tuts book began by saying that, whatever else 
Christianity is, it is certainly work. The other side 
of this truth must be dealt with now. Work itself is 
religious. It must be interpreted in terms of the spir- 
itual. And it must be honored as such. This view 
is not distinctive with Christianity. “The gods,” we 
read in Xenophon, “sell us all good things for the price 
of our labor.” Yet labor is a vital part of the Chris- 
tian faith. You would cut the heart out of Chris- 
tianity if you did away with it. The old monks knew 
this when they adopted the slogan, Laborare est orare 
—‘Work is worship.” 


THrE MEANING OF LABOR 


The pagan view of work.—Aristotle divided occupa- 
tions into honorable and ignoble. But how strange a 
division he made! Only those engaged in philosophy 
or politics were at honorable labor; not only the man- 
ual workers, but the merchants and professional men 
also, had ignoble occupations! 

There are people to-day whose view of work is even 
less accurate. We have with us intellectual aristocrats 
who look down upon the working classes with a sneer 
upon their faces. There are those who regard “‘com- 
mon” labor as uniformly or inherently inferior. And 
there are always those who have no use for labor of 
any sort. They think they are compelled to work “in 
the sweat of their brow” because something, sometime, 
went wrong with human affairs. Some of them seize 


154 


LABOR 155 


upon one of the Genesis stories in support of their 
pessimism. Even so great a poet as Browning, in one 
of the finest of all his productions, speaks of ‘“‘the vul- 
gar mass called work.’ One Sunday afternoon, years 
ago, the president of Harvard University addressed 
an audience of laboring men in Boston. The follow- 
ing week, the head of the Boston Labor Council spoke 
to the same group. This worthy, at one point in his 
address, looked up from his manuscript to say, ‘“‘Presi- 
dent Eliot spoke to you last Sunday about ‘The Joy of 
Work’! Instantly a derisive roar of laughter came 
from the audience. To think that any man should be 
so silly as to talk of “the joy of work’! Dean Brown 
says that was the saddest laugh heard in that hall in 
many a day. 

The Christian view of work.—Christianity has 
always had a profound respect for work. By teaching 
that ‘all service ranks the same with God” it exalted 
the most menial of tasks: 


“A servant with this clause 
Makes drudgery divine, 
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws 
Makes that and th’ action fine.” 


Hugh Black transformed Herbert’s lines into prose 
when he said: “Spiritually it makes little difference 
what our work is: it is the manner of our doing it. A 
scavenger may be a truer public servant than a cabinet 
minister.” Labor, according to the Christian view, 
is not a brutal something with which the race has been 
cursed. It should occasion joy and gratitude within 
us. “All true work,” said Carlyle, “is religion.” 
This exalted opinion characterized Jesus. He knew 
the meaning of work. He had probably done years of 
labor in Nazareth’s carpenter shop. In the closing 


156 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


days of his brief life he had to endure, not only the 
physical strain contingent upon regular travel and 
speaking, but alert, intellectual effort was called for 
by his work. Those who have labored and been heavy- 
laden have been much refreshed at thought of the 
Christ who thought of them. 

What impressed Jesus about work was the spiritual 
significance of it. “My Father worketh hitherto and 
I work.” And he was forever trying to impress others 
similarly. Many of his parables deal with labor, its 
performance and significance. While he manifested 
interest in what men were working at, he was far more 
interested in what men were working for. Were they 
out to “make money’? Then they worshiped Mam- 
mon and not the God in whose name they prayed. 
Were they performing their tasks simply in order to 
“make a living’? Then they did not rise far above the 
beasts. “‘Pagans,’’ he said, “make food and drink their 
aim.” But were they seeking to render service, know- 
ing how sacred and divine a thing life really is? Then 
they were people after his own heart and were doing 
the will of his Father. 


THE STRUGGLE OF LABOR 


Why did not the church work for labor?—lf, 
then, Christianity believed in the honor of work, you 
would suppose that Christendom would have been eager 
to see to it that the workers were honored. But the 
church scarcely lifted a hand. The Carpenter of Naz- 
areth was soon forgotten; in his place came a Poten- 
tate, who of right consorted only with angels, saints, 
and Popes. The church became a large possessor of 
property and the employer of many. Small wonder 
that it concerned itself little with labor conditions. 
It did what it could to “keep labor in its place,” and 


LABOR 157 


its place was lowly. The Reformation could not have 
succeeded when it did had not Luther had the protection 
and friendship of powerful men. Hence we are not 
surprised that the blackest page in his history should 
be his attitude toward the peasants when they were 
in revolt. 

“Through tribulation and distress.’”,—Labor has 
had a long and uphill fight of it. Slave, serf, plebeian, 
“third estate,” proletarian, laboring man—every step 
of advance won with blood and tears and with suffer- 
ing inconceivable. The Old Testament prophets were 
aware of the struggle. “Have we not all one Father?” 
Malachi had inquired. “Hath not one God created 
us? Why do we deal treacherously every man against 
his brothers?” It had always been on the conscience 
of the Hebrew; he treated his labor often with great 
considerateness. Not so the rest of the world. Twice, 
the historians tell us, the plebeians walked out of Rome, 
threatening to build a city elsewhere, until the threat 
gained them their point. 

Feudalism at least did away with pauperism; peo- 
ple attached to manors might not have much, but they 
were at least reasonably safe against destitution. Yet 
it was a long, hard pull before provisions for the health 
and safety of the toilers began to be made, on any con- 
siderable scale. Occasionally some beneficent spirit 
would undertake to devise some occupational scheme 
which would yield “unto the hired person both in time 
of scarcity and in time of plenty a convenient propor- 
tion of wages,” but little came of it. It is still an 
unsolved riddle, though some of us think we see a 
light. . . . An English statute of 1514 fixed the hours 
of labor during March to September from 5 A. M. to 
7 or 8 p. M. with half an hour for breakfast and an 
hour and a half off for the midday meal, while in win- 


158 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


ter the length of daylight fixed the limits. For all of 
which they received wages that scarcely served to keep 
bedy and soul together. By royal prerogative a king 
might compel men to work at such wages as he saw fit, 
and none too often did he have a sense of the fitness 
of things. 

The dawn of a better day.—The lining on the 
cloud of such catastrophes as the Great Plague of 
1340 was that the shortage of labor, resulting from the 
appalling number of deaths, made it possible for labor 
to secure better terms. In vain were statutes enacted 
and reenacted to compel laborers to work at wages 
prescribed by those in power. Peasant wars arose in 
Germany, as Froissart saw it, “all through the too 
great comfort of the commonalty.” Insurrections in 
England were led by such men as Wat the Tyler and 
out of the days of “the mad priest,’’ John Ball, the 
taunt has come down to us: 


“When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman?” 


In thanks for his efforts he was hanged and quartered 
at Saint Albans; but with his death English serfdom 
came to an end. Some were trying to get out from 
under it all by weird schemes, especially the Anabap- 
tists. When the Bishop of Munster took the city from 
them he “had the Anabaptist leaders tortured very 
horribly and executed in the marketplace, their mu- 
tilated bodies being hung in cages from a church 
tower, * that all the world might know that Christian 
rule had again been restored to Munster! 

How the church helped.—While the church, on the 
whole, did but little to help labor on, there were always 





*H. G. Wells, The Outline of History. Reprinted by permis- 
sion of The Macmillan Company. 


LABOR 159 


those in the churches who consecrated their lives to 
the good of the masses that toil. Among these, one 
remembers at once the names of John Bright and the 
Lord of Shaftesbury. On occasion a Pope or church- 
leader was humane ahead of his time. But it was not 
until recent times, long after the machine age had been 
ushered in, that the church began seriously to face the 
challenge of labor. Large sections of the labor world 
became ardent adherents of the socialism fathered by 
Karl Marx. 

In regard to labor, the soul of the church has been 
saved by the heroic efforts of many of its forward- 
looking sons and daughters. Largely due to their in- 
spiration and activities, such agencies as the Federal 
Council of Churches of Christ in America and the So- 
cial Service Federations of the various denominations 
are cooperating to secure equitable consideration for 
labor. 

Despite its frequent neglect of labor in its upward 
strivings, the church has made many indirect contribu- 
tions to tts cause. The Christian love of justice, its 
hatred of oppression, its teaching of brotherhood, its 
creation of “divine discontent,’ its insistence that 
people must not be used merely as means but always 
must be respected as ends in themselves, all went to 
stimulate labor in its struggles. Such movements as 
the Wesleyan Revival, with its emphasis on lay preach- 
ing, did much to provide the labor movement with com- 
petent spokesmen. Mr. Stead tells impressive stories 
of the leadership of labor in Great Britain by Wes- 
leyan local preachers. He also traces the first trade- 
union to a society of tailors which existed “to promote 
Amity and true Christian Charity.”? To-day the 
church is openly at work on work. The formulation 


*See The Story of Social Christianity, vol. ii, pp. 175-192. 


160 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


of the Social Creed of the Churches was a notable 
achievement. The church is in honor bound to trans- 
late that creed into life. This will require many a 
fight! ‘Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just.” 


THe Ricut To LABor . 


What can Christians do for labor?—-As was inti- 
mated in our discussion of the child; they can insist 
that vocational direction be given youth. Many of us 
are at work at the wrong jobs. Constant trouble re- 
sults from the maladjustment of people to their tasks. 
There can be no industrial peace so long as people hate 
the work they are set to do. “Labor of love’ not in- 
frequently involves labor we do not love; but for a 
steady diet only labor we love will do. . Jesus once ob- 
served that you cannot gather grapes from thorns, yet 
that ridiculous policy, has been long pursued in the 
realm of work. People are best fit to work at the work 
they best fit. No one should just drift into a job; such 
consecrated and disinterested guidance should be pro- 
vided that the decision will be best both for the indi- 
vidual and society. 

“A workman that needeth not to be ashamed.”’— 
The Christian interpretation of labor has largely gone 
by the board. It is time it came back. Labor must be 
restored to a place of honor. We must cease training 
children to avoid manual work. Jesus’ hands, as 
Harry Webb Farrington has pointed out in his splen- 
did poem, were “rough and brown.” No one needs to 
blush for attending to household duties, or for toiling 
“in the sweat of one’s brow.” 

The laborer must be made to see that labor is honor- 
able. Any labor that is not ought to be outlawed at 
once. Every laborer should be able to test his work 
by at least these five items: 


LABOR 161 


1. His work should be socially useful. 

2. It should give him a genuine chance for self- 
expression. ) 

3. It should be a source of joy, not a burden griev- 
ous to be borne. 

4. It should be conducive to his higher life. 

5. It should provide him adequate financial returns. 

A Christian will eagerly set himself to making these 
tests possible. 

We must quit speaking of laborers as “hands,” and 
cease to assume that labor is a mere commodity, to be 
purchased at the lowest available figure. Labor must 
be thought-of in terms of human values. That is how 
Christianity always thinks of folks. The suggestion 
of inherent inferiority to brain workers, managers, 
and financiers, must be banished from the mind. » 


“Work shall be prayer, if all is wrought 
As thou wouldst have it done; 
And prayer, by thee inspired and taught, 
Itself with work be one.” 


For Discussion 


1. Let someone in the class bring in a brief description 
of the modern labor movements. Then let the mem- 
bers discuss the following questions: Is it Christian 
to be, or to call anyone, a “scab”? Is the “open” 
shop Christian? the “closed” shop? Is it Christian 
to strike? Would Christ approve “sabotage” ? 

2. How should Christians measure work, by its respect- 
ability or its importance? its wages or its worth? 

3. Is the “eight-hour day” too long? By what principle 
may we decide how long men ought to work? 

4. When the monks, during the later part of the Middle 
Ages, were the expert agriculturists, did they serve 
the cause of labor? Has the coming of the machine 
helped the laboring masses? 


162 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


5s. How much education should a workingman have? 
6. If you were an employer, how would you treat your 
“help”? 
SUGGESTED READINGS 


Diefendorf, Dorr F., The Christian in Social Relation- 
ships, Chap. IV. 

Hodgkin, Henry T., The Christian Revolution, Chap. IX. 

Smith, George B., The Principles of Christian Living, 
Chap. XIII. 


CHAPTER XVII 
HEALTH 


VIRTUALLY every religion has endeavored to come 
“with healing in its wings.” With stately and weighty 
phrases the Hebrew prophet spoke of the physical 
blessings that issue from faith in God: “Strengthen 
the weak hands and confirm... the feeble knees. 
Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, 
fear not; behold, your God will come. . . . Then the 
eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the 
deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame leap as 
the hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.” 
Surely, Christianity could say no less than that. 


CHRISTIAN COMPASSION 


“The Great Physician.”—If Jesus ever had a sick 
day, the writers of the Gospels forgot to make men- 
tion of it. He seemed to exude health. People felt 
that there was healing in his touch. His was a buoy- 
ant presence. You had best not go to the artists if 
you wish a fair picture of him. They have been more 
eager to make him look good than strong. The rec- 
ords will serve you better if you care to visualize him. 
He could not have created the amazing impression he 
made had he been anything but robust and vigorous. 

He believed health to be the will of God for His 
children. Over against the belief, still common in our 
day, that sickness is really a blessing in disguise and 
that physical frailty is peculiarly conducive to spirit- 
uality, we should remember that Jesus never once 

163 


164 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


hinted that disease was sent from God. Indeed, more 
than once he spoke of it as Satanic. He effected his 
cures in the name and power of Deity. Evidently, the 
God he loved is the God of health. Jesus ever stood 
ready to “heal them that had need of healing.” 

Yet he never made a fetish out of health. He was 
too well aware of more important things than physical 
well-being. Hence he said that men had better go 
through life maimed than to wreck their souls. He 
was less concerned with a right-working body than 
with a body working right. Yet back in Nazareth he 
had announced as part of his mission, “to proclaim 

. recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty 
them that are bruised.” 

The healing ministry—That he sought to fulfill 
this mission the Gospel records show. Luke, himself 
a physician, naturally had his eyes wide open for this 
part of the Master’s work. About a third of all the 
narratives related in the Gospels are concerned with 
the healing Christ did. Not only did he himself heal 
those “‘sick with divers diseases,’ but he sent his dis- 
ciples “forth to heal the sick.” 

From that day to this his followers have felt it their 
duty to assuage human ills and to further health. They 
may not have used his methods, but in compassion 
they have been akin to him. The sympathy of Jesus 
for the sick and unfortunate has ever served as a spur 
to efforts on their behalf. ‘All these things his spirit 
writes on truly awakened hearts.” No one in all his- 
tory can begin to compare with Jesus in providing hu- 
manity with impetus toward the humane. Compare 
any land on the globe where the gospel has had no 
effect with any country that has been under the influ- 
ence of Christ. Keep in mind that our evils landed 
in mission fields about as soon as our gospel did— 


HEALTH | 165 


sooner, sometimes—and that often well-intentioned 
white folks tried to foist what they considered civil- 
ized habits upon their converts, often with disastrous 
results. Yet with all this taken due notice of, see the 
difference in health, or, for the matter of that, the 
difference in any of the values that, irrespective of 
race, enrich personality. Jesus has made the dif- 
ference! 

The church remains level-headed.—The church 
at large also never made a fetish out of health. No- 
where in the New Testament do you read that in 
thanks for being a Christian, you will suffer disease 
no more. Despite the fact that healing sects have con- 
stantly been at hand, with clamorings and éclat, the 
church has had better sense. Think of Livingstone in 
Africa, taking a pen in his fevered hands, and writing 
in his diary, “I am immortal till my work is done.” 
Then suppose that Livingstone had considered his 
health first of all! Fancy a Carey or a Moffatt holding 
health as his chief pursuit! 

This does not mean, however, that the church has 
done all it should or could do about health. As a mat- 
ter of fact it has had and still has, much confusion on 
this score. Straight up through the Middle Ages, and 
even to-day, though now on a much smaller scale, 
leaders of the church practiced and sanctioned “spir- 
itual healing.” Side by side with this the medical pro- 
fession grew, until in our day that profession has most 
matters of health in charge. It was not easy, however, 
for the church to reconcile these two. Recent findings 
have convinced some of us that faith-healing as a 
part of religious work is coming to an end. A com- 
mittee of a British church body (the Lambeth Con- 
ference) recently brought in the report that it had 
“found no evidence of any cases of healing which can- 


166 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


not be paralleled by similar cases wrought by psycho- 
therapy without religion, and by instances of spon- 
taneous healing which often occur even in the gravest 
cases in ordinary medical practice.” The church, for 
the most part now, acknowledges the lead of the physi- 
cian who comes trained and accredited for the healing 
of disease. 

“Greater works than these shall ye do.””—What 
is here written is not intended to cast reflections upon, 
or to give an interpretation of, the miraculous cures 
of Christ. But even a superficial reading of church 
history should convince us that, for the most part, his 
disciples have not had the same power. The writer, 
for one, believes that Jesus did not intend that they 
should. The significance of Jesus warranted the 
unique. But if the miraculous could supplant the 
orderly, intellectual confusion would be upon us. 
What a topsy-turvy world this then would be! Truth 
is, it is just by orderly, scientific research and meth- 
ods that medical science has come as far as it has, 
which is very far. If you seek for a miracle, here is 
one for you full grown! Consider the few implements 
and institutions existent for healing and health in the 
time of Jesus, and compare with them the instruments, 
the ability, and the agencies of to-day! How few 
were the measures then for the protection of health 
anywhere in the world! Now we have boards of 
health in nations, States, towns, and communities, and 
international research boards, and} the training of 
school children in hygiene. 

If the change does not strike you as miraculous, 
any miracle would likely be wasted on you! Remem- 
ber that, to a Christian, “natural processes” interpret 
God, and that the spirit of Jesus is in this orderly 
development. 


HEALTH 167 


Our HEALING ToucH 


The Christian contribution.—What, then, has 
Christianity to do with health? Much every way. 
When you have taken account of all the foregoing, 
you have still to regard that Christianity has made 
the surpassing contribution to bodily health. The 
fact that some of this has been by indirection does not 
detract one iota from the achievement itself. How 
could it possibly have contributed better toward physi- 
cal health than to further clean habits of living and 
thinking, to provide men with consciences void of 
offense toward God and men, and to “give the peace 
that passeth understanding’? For if any one truth 
above others is slowly but surely making its way into 
the consciousness of Christendom, it is that the mind 
and the spirit profoundly influence the body. The 
only safe way to be physically fit is to be spiritually 
healthy, and Christianity has majored in healthy- 
mindedness. 

Cleanliness.—To Christians cleanliness is next to 
godliness; indeed, it is a part of it. Christians have 
become convinced that “the body is the temple of the 
Holy Ghost.” They have felt that God’s shrine ought 
to be kept at its best. Hence they have taken pains 
to keep their bodies clean, both outside and in. All 
of which was bound to be reflected in the life of so- 
ciety. Christianity has poured clean blood into the 
veins of the race. And by wholesome family life it 
has greatly aided health. In the very nature of the 
case, results such as these cannot be tabulated into 
statistics. Can you imagine what the figures would 
run to, were it possible to put all this down? 

The love of truth.—Then, the Christian love of 
truth comes in for some credit here. Has it not 


168 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


seemed significant to you that science, in the sense that 
it is an organized body of facts and a deliberate move- 
ment for their discovery, both came into being and 
developed in Christendom? Why not somewhere else? 
What could be more Christian than the patient search 
for truth for the sake of service? Medical scientists 
went on that search and we reap the reward, in surgical 
skill, remedies, psychotherapy, and in preventions 
worth far more than cures. Future generations will 
arise to call them blessed. They will have eyes to see 
the Great Physician in them. 

Superior citizenship.—Christianity, as we shall 
have occasion to see later, inspired and instilled good 
citizenship. It made folks community-minded. They 
cleaned up their communities. Observe what a notion 
of town-planning William Penn had in mind: “Let 
every house be placed, if the person so will, in the 
middle of its plot, as to the breadthway of it, so that 
there may be ground on each side for gardens or 
orchards or fields, that it may be a green country 
town, which will never be burnt and always whole- 
some.” So another Quaker, George Cadbury, built 
his workers model villages, with never more than thir- 
teen houses on an acre. We are beginning to realize 
what adequate housing, plenty of air, a pure water 
supply, proper sewage systems, and public sanitation 
mean to the health of people. Still, it must be con- 
fessed that as yet community-spirited citizens are 
in the minority. But this is true of Christians 
as yet. By improving the conditions of toil, by 
widening the margin of leisure, and by adding to the 
quality of play the cause of health has been mightily 
advanced. 

Healing the hurt of the world.—‘‘The leaves of 
the tree’ of Christianity have not been merely for the 


HEALTH 169 


healing of its followers, but “for the healing of the 
nations” as well. Not only the church and the school, 
but also the hospital has come to “the lands that are 
very far off’ through the Christian Church. The 
idealism which has made and kept the work of the 
physician, and that of nursing as well, a profession 
rather than a mere business, has been responsible for 
the rise of the medical missionary. Disease, we must 
surely know, is a complicated, affair. It respects 
neither race nor creed. It runs riot over boundary 
lines. What did the influenza care for geography 
when, during and in the wake of the World War, it 
swept millions out of life? These women and men 
who are belting the globe with the visible tokens of 
Christ’s healing ministry are putting the race in their 
debt. Alike with engineer and chemist, they are 
fighting disease where it is most securely intrenched. 
They are cleaning up the sore spots of the world. Hats 
off to them all! 

The consecration of courage.—Those who have 
the love of God and the spirit of Christ in their lives 
gather courage with the years to challenge every 
disease that plagues the children of men, for dis- 
ease is a wanton thing. It levies enormous tribute. 
It makes multitudes socially ineffective; unfit for the 
tasks of the Realm of God. In the spirit of Jesus, with 
relentless ardor, they are out to exorcise every demon 
of disease. Often they have hard sledding of it. 
Sometimes they get rid of one to find another equally 
bad. Besides, people are frequently slow to follow 
their best advice. Practice is not up to knowledge. 
But they are not dismayed. When the ranks of their 
heroes thin, the spirit of Christ brings recruits, and 
the battle goes on. Some poet seeking a theme fit for 
the best of his art might well strike his lyre in praise 


170 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


of these who heal our hurts and who are the helpers 
of health. 

Let us now once again enumerate the great things 
the Lord has done. He who for our sakes became 
poor, has enriched us all; he has, as was prophesied of 
him, served to enlighten every one who comes into the 
world; he has given his blessing to labor and so made 
labor a blessing, and by his healing touch, brought 
gladness to all the earth. 


For Discussion 


1. Should the churches engage in healing by way of heal- 
ing missions, etc.? (Someone might report on the 
Emmanuel Movement. ) 

2. Should there be definite cooperation between clergy- 
men and physicians? 

3. Do healing sects emphasize any truth most churches 
neglect? If so, how could the churches make like 
emphasis? Do you know any churches that do? 

4. Will the time ever come when there will be no more 
disease? 

5. In which way does a young person who neglects his 

health injure the Christian cause? 

6. Has God any bodies except ours in which to live? 
Does he need any others? How can we best keep in 
mind the fact that our bodies are the temples of 
God? 

SUGGESTED READINGS 


Brown, Charles R., Faith and Health. 
Holmes, John M., Talks to High School Boys. 
Ward, Harry F., Poverty and Wealth, Chap. IX. 


PART V 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK ON CULTURE 


Let my breast be bared 

To every shaft, then, so that Love be still 

My one celestial guide the while I sing 

Of those who caught the pure Promethean fire 

One from another, each crying as he went down 

To one that waited, crowned with youth and joy: 

“Take thou the splendor, carry it out of sight, 

Into the great new age I must not know, 

Into the great new realm I must not tread.’’! 
—Alfred Noyes. 


*From Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes. Reprinted by per- 
mission of Frederick A. Stokes Company, publishers. 


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Fy een ha 


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CHAPTER XVIII 
CIVILIZATION 


THE average person is a believer in progress. Usu- 
ally he assumes it to be inevitable. He thinks it 1s 
bound to come. Some of the world’s best thinkers— 
great men like Herbert Spencer—made this mistake. 
But progress is not inevitable; it has been and may 
be retarded. You have to work for it. Progress has 
been made in the Christian era. Let us not loosely 
assume that it had to come anyway. There were 
reasons why it came: the chief of these we have been 
and are tracing in this book. But there were other 
reasons than the one we are dealing with. Let us not, 
in our enthusiasm for Christianity, suppose all prog- 
ress due to this single agency. It is questionable 
whether any complex sociological achievement can be 
credited to any one cause. We ought to be glad to 
give credit where credit is due. 


THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE PAST 


The forerunners of civilization.—Boast is often 
made of our Christian civilization. This is hotly re- 
futed by those who feel that Christendom as yet 
stands but upon the fringe of the Christian life. But 
before anyone had the courage to call civilization 
Christian, civilization itself was achieved. And _ be- 
fore there was civilization there was barbarism. We 
usually remember only the barbarous in barbarism: 
its ferocious, inhuman, merciless side. When men 
speak of Christianity’s overthrow of barbarism it is 


173 


174 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


this to which they allude. But there is more to re- 
member, for during this period man began to achieve 
tools suited to his hand and to the brain back of the 
hand. The achievements of barbarism were the 
stepping-stones to civilization. Some students go so 
far as to say that man’s achievements during barbar- 
ism transcend in relative importance all his subsequent 
works. We need not go to this length to honor those 
unknown heroes of an obscure past, who had the valor 
to set out on uncharted ways of action and of thought. 
What monuments they deserve! By the same token 
the savage forebears of these barbarians are entitled 
to our vote of thanks. To say that God was working 
his will in and through these unheralded multitudes 
is to say that the spiritual came to expression in the 
evolutionary process. Christians interpret the rise 
of the many by the grace of God. 


“Heading the dreary marches through dark ages; 
Where the rest perished that the best might be, 
Out of the zons raw and red with bloodshed, 
Man that was caveman, found the stars. Forever 
Man to the stars goes marching from the sea.’’? 


The meaning of civilization.—The etymology of 
the word suggests the period since mankind reached 
sufficient intelligence and enough social unity to de- 
velop systems of government. More specifically, it is 
used to denote the time since systems of writing have 
been in use among the more highly developed races. 
In popular usage, however, it has come to imply “all 
that progress in arts, government, social equipment, 
social cooperation, and culture which separates man as 
member of the higher societies from a condition of 


*From Jn Memoriam, John Curtis Underwood. Used by per- 
mission of the author. 


CIVILIZATION 175 


barbarism.” It has been “a twofold movement toward 
aggregation, organization, and stability on the one 
hand, and toward culture and efficiency on the other.” 
You will note that these definitions are supplementary, 
not contradictory. 

Progress in civilization.—These definitions prove 
that civilization is an ancient thing. They indicate, 
furthermore, that the race knew progress prior to the 
coming of Christ. Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Phoenicia, 
Carthage, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and China— 
China, so long, and so long to others unknown, in the 
van of civilization—what stories these names tell! 
Through (and sometimes despite) these varying civil- 
izations, civilization moved. ¥ 

The experience of the Greek indicates what hap- 
pened elsewhere. ‘‘The Greek grew to be Panhellenic 
and then went to Egypt and Babylon, and reached 
some conception of a humanity larger than Hellendom. 
And it is all reflected in speculation—unity grows to 
be a larger and larger circle; gods are fused more than 
ever, interpreted in new tongues and domiciled in new 
pantheons. Nor is this all. Law emerges more and 
more in cities, and Justice takes a larger place in men’s 
thoughts. . . . All the while the alphabet is working 
its miracles; those handy letters, the trader’s useful 
device, serve other ends; books spring up, and books 
mean modernity. Science and philosophy seize their 
chance, and things are said in books that make Olym- 
pus look strange and old; it will need overhauling, 
and it gets it.’’* All of which is said here that you 
may be just in not overestimating Christianity’s part 
in establishing civilization among men. 


* Reprinted from Progress in Religion to the Christian Era, by 
T. R. Glover, by permission of publishers, George H. Doran 
Company. 


176 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


THE DIFFERENCE JESUS MADE 


Civilization becomes Christian.—We are not con- 
cerned in this study with the rise of civilization. 
Whether the civilizations are due to climatic conditions, 
or to economic, racial or other sources, is a debate of 
large moment. But Christianity, as such, is not con- 
cerned with it. This is to say, it is not concerned with 
the roots of civilization. It is concerned with its 
fruits. Christianity did not form civilization; it 
transformed it! 

People are forever assuming that they are dealing 
with a static Christianity and an iron-bound human 
nature. There can be no more serious mistake. Both 
are dynamic. Christianity cannot stay put and stay 
Christian. Human nature also has been and is on the 
move. Christianity did make a change in social cus- 
toms and in social procedure. But it did more. It 
changed men’s motives. It has been said of Jesus 
that he had a passion for personality. “He knew what 
was in man.” And he brought it out! 

The man who became a Christian learned to look 
out upon the world and say, “I am as good as you 
are!’’—the conviction of democracy; and as he looked 
long enough he came also to see and say, “You are as 
good as I am!’’—the conviction of evangelism. Chris- 
tianity came to mean two things to the followers of 
Jesus: 

1. A higher valuation of the individual person. 

2. A widened conception of duty and responsibil- 
ity to one’s fellow men. 

When these ideas became prevalent, they became 
revolutionary. They “turned the world upside down.” 
“The extended conception,” said Benjamin Kidd, “of 
the answer to the question, ‘Who is my neighbor ?’— 


CIVILIZATION 177 


which resulted from the characteristic doctrines of the 
Christian religion, a conception transcending all the 
claims of the family group, State, nation, people, or 
race, and even all the interests comprised in any exist- 
ing order of society—has been the most powerful evo- 
lutionary force which has ever acted on society.” 

Civilization rests upon a new basis.—Civilization 
is less a state than a process. When we say that civ- 
ilization began to be Christianized, we mean that a 
Christian process set in, and its end is by no means in 
sight. But it has been at work long enough to make 
clear to any observer that “of his fullness have we all 
received.” This process accelerated progress. But 
henceforth progress was to be measured less by what 
man did and more by what man became. There came 
a new emphasis. Civilization was shifted from the 
basis of achievements to the basis of attainments. 

Of course, down through the ages, these issues were 
often confused. Jesus once shrewdly told a story of 
a man who had so “much goods’ that he finally said 
to himself, “Soul, take thine ease; eat, drink and be 
merry.” This man was talking to his stomach when 
he thought he was talking to his soul! Many, like him, 
think that because they have, they are. Jesus uttered 
an eager warning lest what men seek to obtain prevent 
what they wish to attain. Not even now is every 
Christian aware of what this means. But in every age 
some have understood. There have always been 
Christians who were confident that Christianity 1s 
God’s device to bring mankind to manhood. 

A galaxy of civilizers—We have seen that the be- 
lief that humanity was to find newness of life in 
Christ produced the Christian Church. Out from this 
church went a glorious company of civilizers. Paul 
heads the list of them. As the church developed, 


178 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


others came. Elsewhere in this series you were given 
a charming introduction to a number of these.* The 
gentle-hearted and great-minded Ulfilas took his civil- 
izing gospel to the Vandals and the Goths; the pugi- 
listic Martin of Tours went to preach to the Franks; 
the heroic Patrick faced the Druids with his message; 
Columba went to Scotland; Columban to Gaul; 
Augustine (the missionary) to those whom Gregory 
the Great had suspected to be “not Angles, but angels” ; 
Boniface to the Germans; Ansgar to the Danes and 
Swedes; while through Cyril and Methodius the Bul- 
garians and Hungarians had the gospel preached to 
them. 

To name these, however, is just to begin the roll- 
call of those who felt “that in the name of Jesus, the 
world should be reborn,” and who lived and suffered 
and died, in obedience to the vision that was theirs. 
“The fight which the church had to make against the 
new danger from the barbarians, far outweighs, in 
importance, and in claim upon the gratitude of pos- 
terity, all particular pieces of legislation. The Western 
empire fell in 476. From that time, till 800, when 
Charlemagne was crowned in Rome as emperor of the 
Romans, invasion after invasion swept over Europe. 
Goths, Vandals, Franks, Huns, Lombards, and finally 
the followers of Mohammed, brought fire and sword 
on rich plains and noble cities. 

“Against them all the church stood forth as the one 
representative of a higher and a civilized ideal. She 
subdued, she taught, she Christianized.”®> The forces 
of Christendom, hampered without and within as they 


“Builders of the Church and The Spread of Christianity. The 
Abingdon Press. 

*J. K. Mozley, The Achievements of Christianity. Reprinted 
by permission of The Macmillan Company. 





CIVILIZATION 179 


have been and still are, have wrought vast changes 
in the earth. Some of these have been and will be 
recounted here, and others have been suggested in 
Tucker’s Builders of the Church and Hutchinson’s The 
Spread of Christianity. 


THE MopDERN EMPHASIS 


Civilization continues.—The church is at it still. 
You will hear it said time and again that there has 
been a reversion to barbarism, but in every age men 
have been able to point to a dearth of moral enthusi- 
asm. They have felt that civilization does not yet 
amount to much. This is why a brilliant Englishman 
by the name of Carpenter once wrote a scintillant 
essay on “Civilization, Its Cause and Cure.” 

Over against this one may well remind oneself that, 
although Protestantism only half succeeded at the 
task God set his church to, to-day it busies itself, as 
it never has heretofore, with bringing the good news 
of God to all the people on earth. John Stuart Mill 
said that “civilization in every one of its aspects 1s a 
struggle against the animal instincts. Over some, even 
of the strongest of them, it has shown itself capable 
of acquiring abundant control.”’ Here the fine hand of 
Christianity is plainly to be seen. Mr. H. G. Wells 
tells us that “Christianity opened men’s eyes to fresh 
aspects of a unified world.”” Yes, and more. It opened 
men’s eyes to the possibility of a redeemed world, 
brought under the dominion of the Prince of Peace. 
The more Christian one is, the more determined one 
becomes to set up God’s realm among men. 

Our missionaries have majored in this business of 
civilizing. As Dr. J. F. Dennis, in his Christian Mis- 
sions and Social Progress, showed years ago, missions 
resulted in the making of new public opinion, better 


180 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


methods of education and a superior sort of it; new 
literatures have been created by them and the intellec- 
tual life has been stimulated. ‘The ideals of service, 
a nobler conception of patriotism and politics and 
cleaner personal habits have been introduced by mis- 
sions. Women and children have been lifted upon a 
nobler plane. Cannibalism, slavery, human sacrifices, 
cruelty departed under their influence; community wel- 
fare, sanitation, hospitals, homes, and better laws have 
come. And still their good work goes on! 


For Discussion 


1. How would you distinguish between Christianity and 

civilization ? 

Would you call an educated man, who is morally infe- 

rior, civilized ? 

3. Could anything beside Christianity have brought the 
civilization we now have? 

4. Suppose the missionary fervor of the early church had 
been maintained unimpaired? Would the world be 
civilized now? 

5. Did the new study of the life of Jesus have anything 
to do with the modern increase of missionary effort? 

6. Along which lines, do you suppose, will civilization 
advance in the immediate future? 


to 


SUGGESTED READINGS 
Fosdick, Harry Emerson, Christianity and Progress, 
Chap. I. 
Ellwood, C. A., The Reconstruction of Religion, Chap. I. 
Cross, George, Creative Christianity, Chap. III. 


CHAPTER XIX 
LITERATURE 


CHRISTIANITY has given us the wonderbook of the 
world. Like all great religions, Christianity is ex- 
pressed in, and sustained by a literature as well as by 
institutions. This literature has grown to very large 
proportions. Yet the Bible is by far its most impor- 
tant part. Take the Bible out and the rest will matter 
but little. 


“Hoty Bisite, Book DIVINE” 


The Christian book.—What a book it is! Con- 
sider how it has put our literature in its debt. In the 
history of missions you may read of languages that 
have been made for it. It speaks in almost every 
tongue to which mortals give ear. No other book 
enjoys such prominence. Measured by circulation or 
by influence, it stands in a class by itself. You stretch 
language out of proportions if you say that this book 
has competitors. There is no book like it. And there 
will be none. 

Christians have big business on hand with this book. 
This business is urgent. It ought to be attended to 
at once. We must teach people to know the Bible. 
How shall we teach them to know it if we are igno- 
rant of it ourselves? 

Ignorance of the Bible.—When Tyndale vowed 
that he would make the Bible known to the English 
plowboy he dreamed a dream that was beginning to 
come true when, but a few years later, he was put 

181 


182 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


to death in the neighborhood of Brussels by order of 
Emperor Charles. Were he here to-day, his heart 
would be glad and sad. Glad for the way in which 
the Bible is being spread, sad because of the way in 
which it is being neglected. The world’s great Bible 
Societies would stir him to the heart, but the use of 
the Bible as a parlor decoration would strike him as 
a desecration. He would doubtless grieve for the 
many who have a Bible but have no clear idea of what 
the Bible means. 

To many people the Bible is still a closed book. 
They keep it in their homes, but out of their hearts 
and heads. They speak lightly of it but fail to think 
deeply about it. They wish it kept in our schools, 
but will not school themselves in it. They give the 
Bible the treatment Voltaire gave to God, if the story 
told about him may be believed. He tipped his hat as 
he passed a church, and his friend said, “I thought 
you did not believe in God.’”’ Voltaire replied, “We 
salute, but we do not speak.’””’ Many men study more 
to be lodge members than ever they do to be Chris- 
tians. Here, then, is a book people ought to study— 
Christians most of all. 

One practical way to bring this about is for you 
to make yourself familiar with it. It is not an easy 
book to know. To grasp its secret one is compelled 
to put one’s mind at work. The wisest among us 
are first to say, with Edna St. Vincent Millay: 
“What a big book for such a little head!’ But those 
who struggle to know it will reap ample rewards. It 
yields its richest treasures to those who study it most. 

The notion sometimes obtains among young people 
that the Bible is an exceedingly “dry” book. They 
think of it much like the person who wrote on the fly 
leaf of an old book of sermons in the Boston library: 


LITERATURE 183 


“If there should be another flood, 
For refuge hither fly; 
Though all the world should be submerged 
This book would still be dry.” 


But the reason for this is that they read it without a 
fair idea of how to go at it. If you read by rote “from 
cover to cover,’ many a drowsy moment awaits you; 
but if you will read it with your mind, and in more 
intelligible order, you will find the reading of no book 
more rewarding. 


THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE WorD 


Interpretation of the Bible.—Another service 
Christians must render is to interpret the Bible in the 
terms of our day. The man who talks of the Bible 
as if it were a book that can be read as one reads a 
letter or newspaper speaks more foolishly than most 
folks care to speak. We cannot be thankful enough 
to the scholars who have brought to light the facts 
about the Bible. We ought to be heartily ashamed 
of the many men and women who glibly hurl taunts 
of derision at those literary investigators commonly 
called “higher critics.” Some do not like to have us 
talk of interpreting the Bible because they are sure that 
the Bible can interpret itself. We ought to recognize 
that it has failed so to do. What a strange, contra- 
dictory medley of interpretations have people read out 
of this book or into it! Yet they have mostly insisted 
that their interpretation was the only accurate one. 

People must be made to see that this book was born 
in the East, but grew to life in the West. The Bible 
lands to-day are the lands of the Koran. From the 
minarets of their mosques the Moslem message sounds. 
“He came unto his own, and his own received him not.”’ 
Only the West received him, and that received him only 


184 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


in part. The Western world is swayed by an Eastern 
book, or, to speak more correctly, by a collection of 
Eastern books. 

Getting the Bible into trouble.—This has had se- 
rious consequences. It has caused the Bible to be 
grossly misunderstood. People mistook it for some- 
thing mechanically inspired, “equally and in all parts” 
the word of God. This theory took a firm hold on 
Protestantism soon after the passing of the leaders of 
the Reformation. It caused mischief in the church and 
is still working much harm. 

A celebrated scold is reported to have praised the 
Bible as “that splendid mine of invective.” But with 
this theory the Bible became an arsenal of arguments. 
In every debate resort was had to “proof-texts.” They 
culled from the Bible those sections that favored their 
contentions. It did not take large ingenuity to create, 
by the aid of this theory, creeds contradictory of all 
the rest. The slave and liquor traffics and war were 
defended with scriptural quotations, and Paul’s words 
were often used to “keep woman in her place.” 

Missing the point.—Not that sober counsel had 
been or was lacking. Bishop Butler in his great 
Analogy of Religion had insisted that “reason can, 
and ... ought to judge, not only the meaning, but 
also the morality and the evidence of revelation,” but 
sane advice such as this made scant impression then, 
and little impression now, on those who have once 
surrendered to this theory. ‘‘What damned error but 
some sober brow has blest it and approved it with a 
text?” “Literalists’” claim the Bible as a textbook, 
but they use it chiefly as a book of texts. They are all 
eyes for what is in the Bible, but remain quite blind 
to what the Bible is for. 

Our new opportunity.—Yet upon the church at 


LITERATURE 185 


large this theory is loosing its hold. This for the sim- 
ple reason that we have come to know something of 
the mind of the East. For some generations past our 
scholars and missionaries have had access to the East. 
By way of archeology and numerous other studies 
they have put us on the trail of the way the people of 
whom we read in the Bible lived and thought, and 
just what the Bible-writers meant with the words they 
used. We do not yet know all that we need to know. 
We are waiting for further light. 

Meanwhile, we are deeply grateful for the light 
that is being shed. Before the days of these scholars 
we had no way of knowing how the mind of the East 
did its work. One guess was as good as another; 
churches split and sects made war over the guesses 
made. But now we are coming to know what the 
Bible really means. We see now that few of the 
thought-forms used by biblical writers are in vogue 
to-day. So we try to interpret their thoughts in lan- 
guage that reaches our minds and answers to our needs. 
This we must do for our own age. In every age this 
same thing will probably need to be done. 


THe BIBLE AND LIFE 


Testing the Bible out.—There is another reason 
why this mechanical theory is going the way of all 
flesh. The scientific habit has taken hold on men. 
Luther could not stand Copernicus, and the Roman 
Church had burned Bruno at the stake! But the 
church could not always play the fool like that. Time 
came when the leaders of the church welcomed the 
facts of science. Astronomy, geology, the theory of 
evolution each came to make its impression on the 
minds of Christian men. 

Thus the Bible itself was finally put under the 


186 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


searchlight, and all things pertaining to it were care- 
fully scrutinized. And with what result? They found 
the Bible a library of books written at different times, 
under differing circumstances, by different people with 
differing viewpoints, who wrote to tell the story of 
God’s interest in, care for, and love of them and us. 
But they also found that this view of the Bible im- 
mensely increased its value for them and for the world. 
No need for harmonizing or allegorizing passages now! 
One could now read the record as it is, without mental 
reservations, and see for oneself the progress of God’s 
revelation to men. The Bible became for them the 
book of life, as it had not been heretofore. The in- 
spiration of the Bible became clear to them, not from 
a theory, but because of experience. They knew the 
Bible to be inspired because it inspired them to better 
living and to a deeper love of the good, the beautiful, 
and the true. 


“Beyond the sacred page 
I seek thee, Lord; 
My spirit pants for thee 
Living Word.” 


We must be considerate.—Do not for one moment 
suppose that it 1s easy to shift from the old view to 
the new one. To wrench oneself loose from the moor- 
ings one has been trained to revere hurts to the core. 
Only they know who have been there. Ask anyone 
who was taught to “believe the Bible word for word” 
how went the journey to the higher view. You will 
get an impressive recital of misgivings and of anguish 
that you will not soon forget. Never make light of 
the struggle this transition involves. Both the spirit 
and mind of Christ must be in you if you really care 
to help people through. If we do our part in our day, 


LITERATURE 187 


we shall spare future generations the pain such people 
now endure. 

The intent of the Bible.—It is one thing to get at 
the truth about the Bible. It is another and a far more 
important thing to get at the truth of the Bible. And 
it is this of which the world most stands in need. 
The Bible tells a great story of the dealings of God 
with men. Besides, it reveals God’s will of the deal- 
ings of men with men. No man ever went to jail or 
spilt his blood for the Bible in the hope that thus there 
might be preserved to the race a literary masterpiece 
or an interesting field for research. They suffered and 
gave up their lives for the message of the Book. This 
is why the church paid in pain the cost of making it 
possible for men to be free to read it anywhere under 
the sun. If ever you feel in need of a dose of heroism, 
read the story of some of those who labored and died 
that we might have this book to read. If that does 
not put red blood into you, count yourself clean gone. 
They risked their lives for the Bible because they be- 
lieved that God speaks his truth through it. 

There is a sense in which we must all be Bibles, 
just as in a vital sense we must all be Christs. We are 
to be “living epistles, read and known of all.” In us, 
once again, the word of God must become flesh. But 
in the Bible the word of God was made book. Let us 
master it, circulate it, and interpret it spiritually. 


Yet ANOTHER TASK 


Religious literature.—We have already noted that 
Christianity has caused the existence of a large body of 
religious literature, not the least of which is its col- 
lection of great hymns. Here too is a field.that offers 
golden opportunities. It may be, as a gruff old friend 
used to complain, that “there never was a time when 


188 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


folks read so much and thought so little” ; still the fact 
that they do read adds the labor of providing an ade- 
quate religious literature. With the opening of new 
fields, such as dramatization in religious work, and 
enlarged educational projects, books and articles must 
be produced that link the message of Christ to the 
thinking of the people. 

Christianizing literature.—But an even greater task 
confronts Christian men and women. We must not 
simply make religious literature; we must make litera- 
ture religious. This does not mean that every book 
and poem will need to be pious in tone or religious in 
its wording. It does mean that our literature should 
be written in the spirit of Jesus. It should aim to be 
wholesome and clean; it should become less necessary 
for us to wade through a cribful of rubbish to get at 
a kernel of truth. 

We shall have to correct our standards. Now we 
often call literature good because of how it says things 
rather than because of what it says. Long years ago 
a prophet said, “Woe to writers that write perverse- 
ness.” That is a passage the church needs to quote for 
the benefit of the writing-craft. Perhaps we should 
stress the matter a bit and show that, while there is 
woe to them, there is much woe through them. They 
have damaged character, undermined faith, lowered 
life, beclouded issues, and perverted tastes. They 
used their brilliancy to dazzle, not direct. Here is a 
vast field in which young people who “know God” may 
“do exploits.” 


“Feeble and false the brightest flames by thoughts severe 
unfed ; 
Book-lore ne’er served when trials came, nor gifts where 
faith was dead.” 


LITERATURE 189 


For DiscussIon 


. Name a book that tells how the Bible came together ; 
name another that tells how it has come down to us. 

Should every Christian read the Bible through? How 
would you go about it to do so? 

. How much of the Bible should all of us know by 

heart? 

. What is it that distinguishes religious from other 
literature? 

Can you mention some “regular” novels that are really 
Christian ? 


. If you, as a Christian, went in for literature, what 


would you write about? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Wood and Grant, The Bible as Literature. 
Hough, Lynn H., The Inevitable Book. 
Laufer, Calvin W., The Bible: Story and Content. 


CHAPTER XX 
TRE ARTS 


“AuNTY,” said a Scotch lad, after they had been 
watching a sunset for a while, “when I grow up, [’m 
going to help God paint the sky!’ There is something 
of this desire in every normal being. Socrates 
prayed, “Make thou me beautiful within,” because 
he was forever trying to make others beautiful. All 
of us wish to touch life with light and glory. We are 
all eager to make life beautiful. In this wish we are 
partners—or, better, heirs—of Jesus Christ. He 
helped God paint the sky! And he hands on the 
brushes to us! 


ART 


“We beheld his glory, full of grace and truth.”— 
In one of his notable sermons the late Bishop Quayle 
reminded his hearers that we should not call Jesus 
“the good shepherd” unless we remember that he 
really said, “I am the beautiful shepherd.” In every 
age Jesus has been just this to multitudes. Perhaps 
this was because his beauty went to the deeps. As no 
other he “adorned the doctrine of God.” To him God 
was beautiful. Hence, only that was beauty which 
led men to see and know God. 

Art and art.—In so doing Jesus took sides in a 
struggle that existed prior to his coming and that is 
on to-day. Two conceptions of art have been striving 
for the mastery, a higher and a lower. On the one 
side there have been those who did not believe that the 


190 


THE ARTS 191 


esthetic needed to be ethical. To them beauty was “‘its 
own excuse for being.’’ This is the view Jesus op- 
posed with all his energy. He was against things that 
“indeed appear beautiful outward but are within full 
of ... all uncleanness.” It seemed folly to him to 
wash “the outside of the cup,” while no care was taken 
for the filth inside of it. He felt that people who did 
this got their values mixed. He warned men against 
taking tinsel and trappings for beauty that inheres. 
“Consider the lilies of the field. . . . I say unto you, 
that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed 
like one of these.” 

Art follows Christ.—Take it through the centuries, 
and you find that the artists have taken their clue from 
Christ. They have used art to further goodness and 
to teach the truths of God. The contribution of Jesus 
to art is most impressive. The reason why Christian- 
ity has been at work on art is because Christianity has 
been at work in art. The greatest of the painters have 
been followers of Christ. Art would border penury, 
both in ideals and output, if Jesus had not come. 

It goes without saying that pictures may be religious 
without being religious pictures. Yet a large propor- 
tion of the masterpieces of the world either have 
Christ for their theme or take their theme from Christ. 
In all the schools of painters—Roman, Florentine, 
Venetian, Flemish, Dutch, French, English, or Amer- 
ican—craftsmen of the brush have been setting the life, 
the love, and the lessons of Jesus to art. Among the 
masters and masterpieces, Christians and Christ pre- 
dominate! Michael Angelo, Leonardi da Vinci, Titian, 
Paul Veronese, Rubens, Rembrandt, Tissot, Holman 
Hunt—these are ancient and modern names artists 
conjure with, and their greatest productions deal with 
Christ, or his mother, or his disciples, or with the 


192 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


things he said and did, or would say and do now! 
Chrysostom thought that art was merely the work of 
man, while the world with its beauty was the work of 
God. If only he had known these men! For by their 
hands the hand of God leaped to life on the canvas. 
They preach in paint. 


ARCHITECTURE 


Christian cathedrals.—But if paintings kept silence, 
the stones would cry out! For Christianity may be 
traced in architecture and sculpture, in statues and 
cathedrals, “soaring heavenward, like martyr flames 
suddenly turned to stone.” Those European cathe- 
drals, whose pictures adorn our walls and beautify our 
books, were conceived in Christian minds and exe- 
cuted by Christian hands. An unimaginable amount 
of devotion went into the making of them. Not only 
their spires, or their windows, or their conspicuous 
carvings, but the minutest details were perfected with 
a care that must forever elicit praise. Once you have 
feasted your eyes on them, you can never be made to 
believe that the only motive for which men will do 
hard work is the motive of gain. Some of the cathe- 
drals were centuries in building. Yet successive gener- 
ations maintained the craftsmanship. In obscure nooks 
and out-of-the-way places the most magnificent and 
conscientious of work may be seen. Why did these 
artists and artisans lavish their labor upon them? 
Chiefly because these cathedrals were the symbols of 
Christ. “For the love of God, not for mere praise or 
hire” they did their best and left to the world this, their 
heritage. 

Two eras of building.—With the eleventh century 
began the great era of cathedral building in the Old 
World. Now, nine centuries later, a renaissance is 





THE’ ARTS 193 


with us in the new. All was not clear gain then. So 
imposing were those cathedrals that they came to be 
overbearing; in the shadow of them men were not 
free to think. Yet, despite all this, their existence is 
justified. There they stand to-day, shorn of their 
ancient power, and hence clothed in greater beauty and 
in meaning more spiritual. They serve to put those 
who see them in mind of eternal things, worship and 
sacrifice, God and Christ and his reign. Christian de- 
votion inspired them, and they, in turn, inspire Chris- 
tian devotion. 

Up to us!—There is no reason why all should not 
be clear gain now that we are turning our thoughts to 
these “sermons in stone.” When Luther and the re- 
formers turned against the arts they wrought great 
harm among us. Protestants have generally been 
wary of the arts. In these United States there are 
but few cathedrals of which we may make boast. 
Most of us still work and worship in inept and inartis- 
tic structures. Yet even we are seeing a light. We 
are putting more store by beauty; we are enriching our 
rituals; we are making our buildings for worship 
buildings of worship. To “worship the King in his 
beauty” we shall worship the King in beauty. The 
time is not far distant when the preaching im our 
churches shall be supplemented by the preaching of 
our churches. There is not much of a future for the 
church which is unwilling to honor Christ by its looks! 


Music 


“Music which is an earnest of a heaven.”— 
Jesus set men singing. And for a good reason. He 
gave them something worth singing about. “The 
music of the gospel led them home.” Count the mu- 
sicians who count in the world of music, and you will 


194 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


not get far before you discover how many of them 
were lovers of Christ—Beethoven, Gaul, Gounod, 
Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schumann, 
Shubert, Stainer, Sullivan, Wagner: singularly Chris- 
tian in character! If you have never yet heard some 
mighty choral rendition of one of the great oratorios, 
such as Handel’s “Messiah,” or the “Redemption” of 
Gounod, know by these presents that you have yet to 
know one of the choicest experiences human life af- 
fords. It is so well-known a fact one needs scarcely 
mention it, that these music masters either had Christ 
for their theme or were making their music in the mind 
that was in him. You may read testimonies like 
Haydn’s who, before he sat down to work out “The 
Creation,’ “earnestly prayed to God that he would 
enable me to praise him worthily.”’ 

“To sing the great Redeemer’s praise.’?—The 
Reformers almost atoned for their revolt against art 
by their enthusiasm for congregational singing. Lu- 
ther’s “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and even 
more his cradle song, crooned over many a one born 
in some “old country:’ “Away in a Manger,” set the 
fashion for Protestantism. ‘To-day hymnody has be- 
come an art—yes, even more than art; it has become 
a treasure. Watts and Wesley and a host of lesser 
lights, though by no means lesser spirits, have had 
their words set to tunes that serve as matchless settings 
for these gems of the spirit. Christianity, it has been 
said, has put music at its most exalted service. It has 
not simply employed music as a means of pleasure, 
but it has made it express the deepest hopes and aims of 
the human soul. 

The great singers.—Perhaps a word about poetry 
will not be amiss right here. For poetry, like love, is 
“music in search of a word.” There is a sense in which 


SE 


THE ARTS 195 


all literature is art. But poetry surely is. Nothing is 
more so. And Christianity is profoundly poetic. It 
would be strange indeed had not Christianity influenced 
the great “singers” of the race. For the story of that 
influence read the major poets. You will be hard put 
to find more than one or two who have no glad word 
for Christ or do not extol the message and the cause 
which was his. Many of the major poets have been 
major prophets of the social meaning of Christianity. 
And while we think of it, two monks, Cadmon and 
Bede, provided our great poets with their literary in- 
strument, which they have so well used, and never used 
so well as in behalf of Christ. 


~ DRAMA 


Christianizing the stage.—Christianity has much 
at stake in the drama and in the dramatic arts. The 
drama too received the impact of Christian ideas and 
ideals, but for reasons too many to enumerate here 
the fostering care of the church was gradually with- 
drawn. As concerns Protestantism, enmity between 
the stage and the pulpit has been very marked. While 
some splendidly Christian plays have been written and 
produced, and not a few have reflected the teachings 
of our Lord, the theatrical world at present, as well as 
the motion picture industry, is, if not anti-Christian, 
certainly unchristian. To have so great an asset with- 
held from the service of Christ ought to give us pause. 

The Protestant Church is now giving attention to it. 
In this day of the democratization of the theater, and 
of the utilization of dramatics and pageantry in all 
forms of education, including the religious, many are 
devoting their talents to the expression of Christian 
life and ideals in this new and expanding era of dra- 
matic expression. They are putting drama at the 


196 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


service of religion. There is room in all the arts for 
new expressions of Christ. But here is a needy field, in 
which Christian playwrights and dramatic directors 
may serve. And unless the writer mistakes all the 
signs of the times, the next chapter in the story of the 
church will contain a considerable section of histrionic 
history. 


For Discussion 


Is beauty as important to religion as truth? 

Let some member of the class give a brief report on 
the Passion Play at Oberammergau. What is the 
value of such a production? 

Will a “mission” conducted in a rented store, with 
folding chairs and an antiquated organ make much 
of an impression on the foreign-born who are 
trained to art? How can they be appealed to? 

Could our hymnals be improved musically? What do 
you think of “gospel” songs? Are there many hymns 
that express the social gospel, stewardship, interna- 
tionalism, or any of the newer phases of the church’s 
work? Should there be? 

Could the church Christianize the theater? If not, 
what could it do? If so, how? 

Mention some great poems that have impressed you 
as Christian. 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Vogt, Van Ogden, Art and Religion. 
Bowran, John G., Christianity and Culture. 
Bailey, Albert E., The Use of Art in Religious Education. 


i 


CHAPTER XXI 
SCIENCE 


Ir used to be said of religion and science that they 
were old foes. It can be said to-day that they may 
be the best of friends. All indications point to a deep- 
ening of this friendship. Doctor Dinsmore tells of a 
witty preacher named Sidney Smith who heard two 
women quarreling. Each woman was in her own 
house, and the houses stood on opposite sides of the 
street. ‘‘Those two women,” said the wit, “‘will never 
agree; for they occupy different premises.” This was 
for long the trouble with science and Christianity. We 
are coming to see now that they are “useless each with- 
out the other.” Multitudes, however, are not yet 
aware of this. To set people right on this matter is 
to render a great piece of service. Christians who 
make clear and keep clear the cooperation of science 
and Christianity do both a good turn. 


SCIENCE AND RELiciIon Botu AFTER THE TRUTH 


No conflict.—The first thing that needs to be broad- 
cast is that there needs to be no conflict between sci- 
ence and religion. In an earlier chapter your atten- 
tion was called to the dogmatists in the church. It 
were strange indeed had there been no dogmatists in 
science. There have been many of them. They 
created the impression that men of science are neces- 
sarily irreligious. It ought to be said that to-day men 
of this stripe are few. Should you ever encounter 
one, you may be sure that he is simply so belated a 


197 


198 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


specimen as to be a candidate for the museum of an- 
tiquities. He is a voice out of a past that is gone for 
good. But the impression once made by men of this 
kind persists to our day. 

Religious scientists—The truth of the matter is 
that the great men of science have belteved in religion. 
Some of them have been grossly slandered on this 
score. Darwin has been widely heralded as an athe- 
ist, when, as a matter of fact, he was nothing of the 
sort. Huxley called himself an agnostic. That is a 
Greek word, with rather an ugly meaning; the Latin 
equivalent for it is “ignoramus”! Anyone who knows 
the work Huxley did will realize at once that when he 
called himself that, he grossly underestimated himself. 
Of all men, here was one man this word would fit 
least! He assured his friend, Charles Kingsley, that 
he would not lie, even if he “had to go to hell for it’; 
any lover of truth will recognize this as a fairly reli- 
gious remark. His ideal was: “To smite all humbugs 
however big; to give a nobler tone to science; to set an 
example of abstinence from petty personal controver- 
sies and of toleration for everything but lying; to be 
indifferent as to whether the work is recognized as 
mine or not, so long as it is done.’”’ Surely, he was 
not far from the kingdom of God! We ought to dis- 
abuse the minds of people of the ancient notion that 
the greatest of our scientists were necessarily the foes 
of religion and had little use for Christianity. Few 
men in the world of science can hope to compare in 
achievement and standing with Newton, Faraday, 
Maxwell, Kelvin, Raleigh, and Pasteur. But these 
all were religionists, devout followers of Jesus Christ. 
If they could, without mental reservation, be Chris- 
tians as well as scientists, that is all the proof one 
needs that no inherent conflict exists between the two. 


SCIENCE 199 


The spiritual giants and science.—The claim can 
further be made that the great men of religion have 
believed in science. This needs to be said much and 
often. The five most potent personalities in Christian 
history were Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Luther, and John 
Wesley. Jesus committed his followers to a sincere 
search for all the truth there is. He insisted that men 
ought to think. He said truth would set them free. 
He was not controlled by tradition or by hallowed cus- 
tom. He was all the while speaking of freedom and 
growth and truth. With all the ado that has been and 
still is being made by those who try to cram Christian- 
ity into calloused creeds, it has not been noted enough 
that Jesus showed no trace of opposition to science, 
and threw all his influence on the side of the open 
mind. The same may be said of Paul. When the news 
came out that there is no break in the creative process 
from nebula to man, a distinguished preacher said, 
“This law of growth is what Paul and I have been 
looking for for some time.” 

In the year 400 Augustine uttered a warning we do 
well to heed to-day: “There is some question as to the 
earth or the sky, or the other elements of this world 

. respecting which one who is not a Christian has 
knowledge, derived from most certain reasoning and 
observation: and it is very disgraceful and mischiey- 
ous, and of all things to be carefully avoided, that a 
Christian, speaking of such matters as being according 
to the Scriptures, should be heard ‘by an unbeliever 
talking such nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving 
him to be as wide from the mark as east and west, can 
hardly refrain himself from laughing.” 

In Luther’s case the question of the connection be- 
tween religion and science as such was not up for de- 
bate. The dispute that centered about the Reforma- 


200 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


tion had other things in mind. But the motive back 
of the reformers’ efforts was at least in part scientific. 
Guizot judged that the Reformation was “‘a vast effort 
by the human mind to achieve its freedom.” It is 
difficult to see how science, as we know and honor it 
to-day, would have been possible at all had Protestant- 
ism not been born. 

Wesley went about seeking “two things in the world, 
truth and love.” In his search for truth he reached 
some astounding conclusions. Read these words of 
his: “By what degrees does Nature raise herself to 
man? ... How will she rectify this head that is 
always inclined toward earth? How change these 
paws into flexible arms? What method will she make 
use of to transform these crooked feet into skillful 
and supple hands? .. . The ape is this rough draft 
of man, this rude sketch, an imperfect representation 
which nevertheless bears a resemblance to him, and is 
the last creature that serves to display the admirable 
progression of the works of God. . . . But mankind 
have their graduations as well as other productions of 
our globe. There is a prodigious number of continued 
links between the most perfect man and the ape.”? 
Wesley used not only the scientific method, but he had 
the scientific spirit. “We think and let think,’ he 
averred of himself and his followers. 

As Doctor Millikan, himself a distinguished scien- 
tist, has pointed out, there can be no conflict between 
science and religion if the greatest minds in both 
fields clearly see that there is none. 


SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN EacH OTHER’s DEBT 


Mutual respect.—This is most fortunate, since the 
two major influences in the making of the modern 


*See Back to Wesley, Frank W. Collier. 





SCIENCE 201 


world are Jesus and science. Christianity and science 
are in many ways alike. At bottom they have a similar 
aim. Both are out for truth. They differ somewhat 
in emphasis. Science uses life for the sake of truth. 
Religion uses truth for the sake of life. Yet both 
strive to usher humanity into larger, fuller life. 

Both live by faith.— Many are not aware of this, 
but that does not alter the fact that religion and sci- 
ence are akin in this respect. Science, like religion, is 
obliged to make assumptions which it cannot “prove” 
in the accepted sense of that word. Science believes 
that the human mind is able to discover truth. It be- 
lieves that what the mind observes really exists. In 
the nature of the case it cannot prove these facts. It 
believes that the basic character of the universe will 
be the same to-morrow as it was yesterday. Here too 
it walks by faith. So one might go on. 

Both science and religion are forms of knowledge. 
—Science is not “all mud,” and religion is not “all 
mist.” Science can bring you to the place where you 
can say, “I know.” So can religion! Of course the 
knowledge is not the same and the proof each requires 
differs. A man does not need to be a good man to be 
convinced of a chemical experiment. But religious 
knowledge requires spiritual preparation. It is con- 
ditioned by character. Only “the pure in heart see 
God.” 

The debt of science to religion.—Moreover, in 
many respects, science and religion are interdependent. 
Each has the other to thank for past and present favors. 
Christendom, in the darkest days of the Dark Ages, 
kept scholarship alive. We cannot be grateful enough 
to the men who in the oblivion of monasteries gave the 
best that was in them that learning might be preserved. 
Roger Bacon, who lived and labored in the thirteenth 


202 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


century, was the forerunner of modern science. So 
devoted was he to science and so great was his love 
of God that not even seventeen years in prison, plus 
all his books condemned, could break that fine spirit 
of his. Would we be Christian enough to stand up 
under such treatment? In his Magnus Opus, written 
in eighteen months at the request of Pope Clement IV, 
he took his stand for experimental science. This monk, 
like Mendel later, put humanity on a new trail. 

When Protestantism came it provided the incentive 
for the very research which, on occasion, it sought to 
disown. The scientific method depends upon the reli- 
gious spirit! Scientists must be honest. They must be 
lovers of truth, else we could take no stock in the re- 
ports they make. But honesty is a spiritual quality. 
Scientists must believe in the worth-whileness of truth. 
They labor in the faith that truth is of ultimate and uni- 
versal significance. But that is, after all, a religious be- 
lief. Scientists must be fearless. “You need not be 
afraid,” said Lowell, “to strike a light; the universe is 
fireproof.’ But whence comes this belief except from 
religion? In other words, the scientific method is 
dependent for its success upon true character. The 
business of Christianity is to create that. 

The debt of religion to science.—But religion is 
also much obligated to science. It has materially aided 
Christianity. The search for facts by way of observa- 
tion, experiment, and reasoning has been applied to its 
history and institutions. It has given us a new Bible. 
It has humanized the church’s theology. It has revolu- 
tionized its educational methods. It has made vast 
contributions to the spread of the faith. The printing 
press and radio now carry their messages everywhere. 
His mind purged of every ulterior motive, in the hope 
that thus he might be an impartial medium for truth, 


SCIENCE 203 


the scientist has been an object lesson to the religious 
investigator. Each has served the other. 


ScIENCE AND RELIGION BoTH IN THE SERVICE OF GoD 


Mutual service.—Each must serve the other. Sci- 
ence, without religion, easily becomes a curse; reli- 
gion, without science, easily becomes foolish. Science 
must be saved from presumption. Just now science 
is suffering from overpopularity. Too many folks bow 
down to it. They take its every word for final truth. 
It is difficult for scientists to keep a level head with all 
the deference that is being paid them. But the best of 
them are alive to this danger. They have never said 
that science knows all that is known, or that it is the 
only channel through which knowledge can come. Re- 
ligion can help scientists to keep their motives pure 
and their spirits humble. 

Religion, on the other hand, must be made, and 
must be, intelligent. It cannot get on without the 
scientific method. Here are two voices out of the sev- 
enteenth century. Doctor Lightfoot, of Cambridge 
University, then made the statement that “heaven and 
earth, center and circumference, were created all to- 
gether, in the same instant. . . . This work took place 
and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 
4004 B. C., at nine o’clock in the morning.” That is 
the sort of foolishness Christianity came to, in the 
absence of the scientific method! But even that far 
back voices were lifted for a more intelligent view of 
things. Joseph Glanvill wrote: “There is not any- 
thing that I know of which hath done more mischief 
to religion than the disparaging of reason, for hereby 
the very foundations of Christian faith have been 
undermined. If reason must not be heard, the being 
of God and the authority of Scripture can neither be 


204 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


proved nor defended; and so our faith drops to the 
ground like a house that hath no foundations.” 

“Elect interpreters.”,—The service Christians can 
render in our day, therefore, is not simply to convince 
people of the interrelation of science and Christianity, 
but also to interpret science religiously. We must 
understand, and help others to understand, what Alfred 
Noyes voiced for us in his lines: 


“What is all science then 
But pure religion, seeking everywhere 
The true commandments, and through many forms 
The eternal power that binds all worlds in one? 
It is man’s age-long struggle to draw near 
His Maker, learn his thoughts, discern his law.’’? 


Once again, let us see how far we have come. We 
have seen that Christianity has been a civilizing power, 
and that it has given us the most civilizing Book. It 
has glorified art. It has led us into truth. No one has 
done more for goodness, beauty, and truth than Jesus 
Christ. Let us, then, be deeply grateful for the culture 
he has inspired. 


For Discussion 


1. Let someone look up and tell the story of the fight 
the church made on the great astronomers. 

2. Why has the church been so reticent about accepting 
scientific results? Was there any value in this con- 
servatism ? 

3. What would have happened to science had Chris- 
tianity not come? 

4. What would have happened to Christianity had there 
been no modern science? 

5. Does the scientific viewpoint ever make for irrever- 
ence? 


* Alfred Noyes, “Watchers of the Sky.” Reprinted by permis- 
sion of Frederick A. Stokes Company, publishers. 


SCIENCE 205 


6. It is often said that our spiritual progress has failed 
to keep pace with our advancement in material 
things. Are these two far apart? How can the 
one catch up to the other? When? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Dinsmore, C. A., Religious Certitude in an Age of 
Science. 

Pupin, Michael, From Immigrant to Inventor. 

Brewster, E. T., The Understanding of Religion. 

Thomson, J. Arthur, Science and Religion. 


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PART VI 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK FOR LIBERTY 


“Where are you going, Great-Heart?” 
“To cleanse the earth of noisome things; 
To draw from life its poison-stings ; 
To give free play to Freedom’s wings.” 
“Then God go with you, Great-Heart!’? 
—John Oxenham. 





*Reprinted from The Vision Splendid, by permission of the 
publishers, George H. Doran Company. 


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CHAPTER XXII 
FREEDOM 


A SoutH AMERICAN government some years ago 
charged a certain denomination with fostering revo- 
lution. Investigation showed that in its work this 
church had been most careful to avoid revolutionary 
references. And yet the church had to concede a 
basis in fact for the charge. For once the gospel is 
preached, new ideas and ideals are sure to come. The 
gospel sets men free. One such experience of free- 
dom develops a taste for more. 


THE PowER OF CHRIST’S IDEAS 


The sword of the spirit.—The influence of Jesus 
on human liberty may be seen all along the line. This 
is the more remarkable when you remember that Jesus 
never had much to say about the political situation in 
his day. It was the talk of the town and of every 
countryside. Jews were all and always ready to dis- 
cuss it. They were not in agreement as to how best 
they might get from under the Roman yoke. Here 
they differed radically. But the proposals of Jesus 
were most outlandish of all. They were not merely 
intended for their political plight, they were meant by 
him to apply everywhere and all the time. Briefly 
stated, they were two: Truth will make you free, and 
love brings liberty. 

Two propositions.—Consider first the first. The 
truth he proclaimed all the while was the value God sets 
on the soul. He felt sure that this truth was able to 
set men free. The Jews did not perceive the power of 

209 


210 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


his idea. Had they not “Abraham to father,” and had 
they not always been mighty in the truth? Yet when 
had truth ever served to free them from tyranny? 

Then there was the second proposal. He came with 
the advocacy of unyielding good will. He said that 
love was the supreme solvent of all ills. And they 
said: “How preposterous! Fancy opposing your op- 
pressors by service and by love!’ His advice did not 
sit well with the patriots. Once people fully grasped 
what was in his mind, many Jews “walked no more 
with him.” They began to inquire if it could possibly 
be that any of the rulers of the people believed what 
he taught. It was a relief to learn that not one was 
to be found. Only a few fisherfolk, and they from 
Gallilee! These Jews could not see how considerate- 
ness could effect more freedom than could conflict. 
Not any too many of us see that now. 

Who is to blame?—We are inclined to be hard on 
the people who failed to get Christ’s message in the 
days of his flesh. But they had more reason for fail- 
ure than we, for they did not have the concurrent tes- 
timony of centuries. No one had ever traced for them 
the power of a single idea to change the behavior of 
nations in a brief space of time. But that has been 
done for us. Many a red-blooded Jew doubtless felt 
that Christ’s teachings made for cowardice. Judas 
the Maccabean was the Pershing of the Jews. He had 
taken to the sword to set his people free. And he had 
made a good job of it even if it did not last. Patriot- 
ism was gauged by one’s willingness to fight for free- 
dom. Christ’s proposal of good will seemed just the 
opposite. Let us not think too harshly of those Jews 
of old. They had no way of checking up on the pro- 
posals of Jesus. There was no evidence in, that they 
could be made to work. 


FREEDOM | 2I1 


“Tender as the brave are only.’—But for us 
there is an abundance of evidence. We can go by his- 
tory. The propositions of Jesus did not make men 
backbone-less. Large numbers of them have “not 
counted their lives dear unto themselves for the excel- 
lencies of Christ.” Christian men have gathered the 
spears to their bosoms that their fellows might be 
free. It may be said of many a man that, not only 
out of love for his nation, but out of love of love, he 
has heard the soundless call of an unseen Leader and 
received invisible power to achieve the impossible. 
Christ has smitten cowardice hip and thigh! Under 
his leadership men have set men free. 


Procress THRouGH Curist’s IDEAS 


The appeal to truth.—And the truth has done just 
this. That truth for long was hidden. For centuries 
Christianity had little chance in Christendom. Autoc- 
racy was the accepted institution: monarchs were 
thought to reign by the will of God, and the Pope 
asserted authority over all. It took time before, bit 
by bit, men traced the meaning of Christ’s message 
and then applied it to governments and the governed. 
Let us note a few stages in its application. 

For Europe the eleventh and twelfth centuries 
marked the era of the town. Kings gladly encouraged 
their rise, for in them they saw two things their hearts 
desired. Cities were exceptionally good channels for 
revenue, and the average king never had quite enough. 
Besides, they counteracted the power of the feudal 
lords. It was a toss-up as to which of these two the 
rulers wanted the more. So towns could not come 
fast enough to suit their highnesses. But kings lived 
to rue the day they had given them countenance. For 
as towns grew, the citizens learned the courage and 


212 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


strength of numbers. They combined counsel and 
resources; and so made effective demands for better 
conditions from those in power. Many a royal head- 
ache preceded a royal charter by which some city se- 
cured rights and privileges from the crown. But just 
how did these townsmen do it? They did it by way. 
of the guilds. These appear to have been much like 
the mutual benefit lodges one finds in all the land. They 
had practical aims, based upon religious principles. 
Merchant and craft guilds were often at loggerheads 
and their strife was bitter and long; in a way it is with 
us still. But about them clustered this incessant de- 
mand for freedom. In these guilds religion played a 
prominent, and sometimes dominant part. It was 
Christian associations that strove to set men free. 
They held out for that respect and that recognition of 
men Jesus had championed so. 

They not only held out for it; they stood up for it. 
We see so clearly the folly of war that we easily forget 
how valiantly men fought to set us free. We must not 
withhold from them the credit which is their due. They 
knew of no better way, and had no other choice, than 
that of force. It is ours to find and use a higher 
method to enhance freedom. But the contribution they 
made should be kept in mind. 

The appeal to love.—To considerateness, good will, 
and the desire to serve, one must likewise trace our 
civil liberties. Has it ever dawned on you that free- 
dom has been gained for us less by men who fought 
it out than by men who thought it out? The thinker 
has, in truth, come to sit on the throne of the world. 
You would not expect, of course, that every one of 
these thinkers had thought things clean through; 
there was too much in their training, habits, and en- 
vironment to make that possible. Yet if they thought 





FREEDOM 213 


in the shadows, they were those of the light of love. 
There was the Magna Charta, “the Bible of human 
liberties.” How did it come about? Based on earlier 
documents, but with liberty written large, it was 
granted ‘by an unwilling king in the thirteenth century 
when a body of noblemen, headed by an archbishop, 
made demand for it. Grant that it was not drafted to 
favor common folks. Yet the men who composed it 
wrought better than they knew. What is of interest 
to us here is that at the center of this monumental 
documental event two outstanding Christians stood. 
Not perfect men were these two, but well in advance of 
their day in their appreciation of the genius of Chris- 
tianity. They were Stephen Langton, the archbishop 
already referred to, and Simon de Montfort, whose life 
had been molded by two great Franciscan friars. 
Makers of freedom.—If you say that this occur- 
rence savored at least as much of force as it did of 
thought, consider that thus far we have been viewing 
the scaffolding. Look at the structure now! See 
what a line of great thinkers have labored at liberty. 
Begin with Thomas Aquinas; he is worth beginning 
with. He insisted that the kings existed only for the 
good of the governed. He broke the ice for Marsiglio 
of Padua, who issued a clarion call for “government 
with the consent of the governed.” Then Erasmus 
appeared, with his relentless taunts at “kings, scarcely 
men, called divine.” These all were Christian men. 
Their ideals of freedom were fashioned after Christ. 
Their voices have gone out to all the earth. Later on 
came Hooker, proposing that substance be given to 
Marsiglio’s dream. Then the Reformation came, with 
its plea for spiritual freedom, and Luther’s splendid 
assertion that men are meant to be free. Then came 
Calvin and Geneva—you should know the story of 


214 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


them—for every city hall in the world ought to be 
in the prophetic succession of his Town Hall there. 
Then a venerable line of philosophers, who were doing 
their political thinking in the spirit of Christ. 

Other names might be recited and other countries 
touched upon. One might tell of brave little Holland 
and its silent Prince who was a prince of God, and how 
the great sea came to be the ally of his great heart in 
bringing liberty to the people he loved; or of Gustavus 
Adolphus, “the saviour of Protestantism,” who died 
at thirty-eight, surrounded by his enemies, looking 
them in the face and saying, “I am the King of Sweden, 
who do seal the religion and liberty of the German 
nation with my blood.” 

But the world, for the most part, has been and still 
is looking to the English-speaking peoples for guidance 
in liberty. And to none more than to these United 
States. Whence came our liberty? It rooted back 
in the Magna Charta and the Reformation ideals. But 
it came to us through the Pilgrims: 


“They were rude men, unlovely, yes, but great, 
Who prayed about the cradle of our state; 
Small room for light or sentimental strains 
In those lean men with empires in their brains; 
Who pitched a state as other men pitch tents, 
And led the march of time to great events.” 


The imprint of the Christ is. upon our institutions. 


SHALL WeE Apopt CHRIST’s PROGRAM ? 


Freedom still to be achieved.—It is said that a 
famous man resolved in youth that he would some day 
write the history of liberty. But he never wrote it, 
because he discovered that liberty was only as yet being 
made history. And that is the truth of the matter 


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FREEDOM 215 


to-day. Account for it as you will, the Christian ideals 
for freedom have been hard to learn. Still much of 
our boasted liberty is such only in name. As these 
lines are being written the issue of free speech is before 
the public again, and not for the last time at that. Con- 
stitutional guarantees are still denied citizens. There 
are “metes and bounds” to our rights, as Bishop Lu- 
ther B. Wilson has pointed out; yet, as he puts it, we 
must “insist that those in conspicuous leadership respect 
in word and in act the Constitution under which they 
live and labor .. for, after all, the metes and bounds 
have their full and proper meaning only when our lead- 
ers by precept and example lead aright, and when the 
administration of governmental authority is in the 
hands of those fitted by education, discernment, and 
character to represent us at our best.” It is necessary 
that we shall see to it that our Constitution, by way of 
amendment, shall “go on to perfection.” But it is 
even more important that the freedom, so guaranteed, 
shall be the portion of all, from the least even unto the 
greatest, irrespective of social standing, political 
power, color, race, or creed. 

Tasks ahead.—A whole chapter might well have 
been written about those women who, conscious of the 
Spirit of Christ, spared neither time nor toil nor treas- 
ure to make woman politically free. Some of them 
are referred to elsewhere in this book. But what is 
significant for the task yet confronting Christians is 
that, the world around, women generally are not only 
denied the franchise but do not have the same rights 
and freedom given men. And it is likewise to be re- 
membered that in large sections of the world the peo- 
ple at large have no such rights to liberty as we deem 
commonplace. The whole world is athrill with the 
passion for liberty. How shall it be achieved? By 


216 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


blood and brutality, or by considerateness, good will, 
and truth? In the final analysis, it is up to Christen- 
dom to say which it shall be. 


“Ts true Freedom but to break 
Fetters for our own dear sake, 
And, with leathern hearts, forget 
That we owe mankind a debt? 
No! true freedom is to share 
All the chains our brothers wear, 
And with heart and hand, to be 
Earnest to make others free!” 


For Discussion 


1. Where does liberty end and where does license begin? 
What is “personal” liberty? 

2. Can anarchy be liberty? 

3. Does civil or political liberty exist in non-Christian 
lands? Can it? 

4. Which is more Christian, to permit people to vote 
when they reach a certain age or to base that right on 
intelligence and character? 

5. Can you think of any proposal to amend the federal 
Constitution by which liberty might be furthered in 
our land? 

6. What degree of freedom should be given “backward” 
races or nations? How might they be fully set free? 


SUGGESTED: READINGS 


Lowell, James Russell, “The Present Crisis.” 

Carlyle, A. J., The Christian Church and Liberty. 

Smith, George B., The Principles of Christian Living, 
Chap. XVII. 


CHAPTER XXIII 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 


THE story of religious intolerance would have to 
take account of virtually all the world’s religions. It 
is impossible to attempt this here. Therefore this 
chapter deals only with the Christian era. Once more 
we shall note that Christianity cured an evil of Chris- 
tendom. Or, speaking more precisely, once more we 
shall note that Christianity is in process of curing 
this evil. 


How INTOLERANCE CAME ABOUT 


Men were long denied the right to worship God as 
conscience dictates. Those who recall the New Testa- 
ment’s enthusiasm for liberty may think this strange. 
But the reasons are clear why the trouble came. 

Man’s inhumanity to man.—In an argument, as 
you have probably observed, you are always kindly 
and logically right, while the man you argue with is 
usually willfully and stubbornly wrong. Men feel 
intensely about their opinions. They try to make their 
beliefs dominant. This is one reason why they write 
creeds. This is one outstanding reason why they de- 
fend them. It was ever thus. Men who stood up for 
their opinions set them down on paper and then held 
out against all who differed from them. The man 
who believes that his faith was once for all delivered 
to the saints of which he is one brooks no interference. 
If you contradict his belief, you commit sacrilege. He 
has the profound conviction that your failure to agree 
with him entitles you to hell. And, just to make sure 

217 


218 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


that nothing slips up in the future life, he proceeds to 
provide you right here with all of it he can! As Vol- 
taire once put it, ““We have butchered one another on 
account of a sentence or a paragraph!” 

Putting chains on thought.—But there were other 
reasons for intolerance. There were political ones. 
So long as Paul was the chief defender of Christian- 
ity, men were able to boast that “where the spirit is, 
there is liberty.””’ But when Constantine took Chris- 
tianity into his charge he made away both with the 
spirit of liberty and the liberty of the spirit. We do 
not recall often enough that with Constantine Chris- 
tianity suffered an eclipse that was all but the end of it. 
It is one of the unlisted miracles that Christianity stood 
the shock. 

Constantine utilized Christianity to keep his empire 
together. For him the “catholic” church was a po- 
litical instrument. It was to be the one bond to keep 
his empire one. This meant, of course, that the bond 
itself had to be kept intact. Only if the church was a 
unit could it serve to preserve the unity of the empire. 
Just at this juncture the emperor met his Waterloo. 
When he tried to force all the church into uniformity 
he found himself with more on his hands than ever he 
bargained for. Still, his attempt succeeded in estab- 
lishing a pernicious viewpoint. It came to be reasoned 
that to question the faith was to weaken the bond, and 
to weaken the bond was to endanger the state. Hence 
a heretic was also a traitor. You can imagine how the 
stock of orthodoxy soared under such a view. Regu- 
larity of belief meant safety and standing and respect- 
ability. You were a trouble-maker if you questioned 
the faith, and trouble a-plenty was made for you. 

The church crushes the faith.—Then there were 
ecclesiastical reasons. H. G. Wells put it succinctly: 


RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 219 


“The gory forefinger of the Etruscan Pontifex Maxi- 
mus emphasized the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth; 
the mental complexity of the Alexandrian Greek en- 
tangled them. In the jangle of these incompatibles the 
church had become dogmatic. In despair of other 
solutions to its intellectual discords it had resorted to 
arbitrary authority. Its priests and bishops were more 
and more men molded to creeds and dogmas and set 
procedures; by the time they became cardinals or 
Popes they were usually oldish men, habituated to a 
political struggle for immediate ends and no longer 
capable of world-wide views. They no longer wanted 
to see the kingdom of God established in the hearts 
of men—they had forgotten about that; they wanted 
to see the power of the church, which was their own 
power, dominating men. They were prepared to bar- 
gain even with the hates and fears and lusts in men’s 
hearts to insure that power. And it was just because 
many of them doubted secretly of the entire soundness 
of their vast and elaborate fabric that they would brook 
no discussion of it. They were intolerant of questions 
of dissent, not because they were sure of their faith, 
but because they were not.’’? 

Greed inhibits Christianity Doubtless there were 
also economic reasons. “The masters, lords, and rul- 
ers of all lands” did not care to have their comfort or 
power interfered with. Those who have had control 
of things have had their share of stupidity. But they 
seem always to have had an inkling of the fact that 
“the thinker sits upon the throne of the world.” They 
seemed to surmise that there is no telling what will 
happen in case a thinker is let loose. They have been 
afraid of him. They have done what they could to 


*H. G. Wells, The Outline of History. Reprinted by B permis- 
sion of The Macmillan Company. 


220 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


keep his ranks thin—likewise lean. They safeguarded 
all the approaches, and religion was one of these. They 
wanted it kept safe. The best way to keep it safe was 
to keep it “sound.” They were always a deal more 
afraid of free thinking than of free-thinkers. Free- 
thinkers had no use for religion. But free thinking 
led to its use in decidedly unpleasant ways for the 
folks in power. So it came that for centuries religious 
liberty, as we understand it to-day, was unheard of. 


THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM 


Freemen.—But men are bound to think, and, as 
Jesus put it, to think in their hearts. “Opinion travel- 
eth the world without passport.” You cannot bar ideas 
from making their way among men. Sooner or later, 
among those who think, some will express their 
thoughts in no uncertain language. They are in the 
grip of the conviction that 


“They are slaves who will not choose 
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, 
Rather than in silence shrink 
From the truth they needs must think.” 


Savonarola and Huss are two of the many we honor 
for refusing to submit to doctrines to which they could 
not subscribe. When the judge read Savonarola out 
of the Church of Rome in the public square of Flor- 
ence, he said, “I excommunicate you from the church 
militant and triumphant.” And Savonarola answered, 
“Militant but not triumphant!’ Huss, with the wood 
that was to burn him piled about him, calmly faced his 
persecutors with the words: “For the truth of this 
gospel I am willing to die.” What good is fire to 
quench a spirit such as this? 


RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 221 


“To sin by silence when we should protest 
Makes cowards out of men. The human race 
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised 
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust 
The Inquisition yet would save the law, 
And guillotines decide our least disputes, 
The few who dare must speak, and speak again, 
To right the wrongs of many.” 


The Inquisition.—But the church was committed to 
the folly of force. Hence its history is stained by the 
blot of the Inquisition, officially founded in 1233 and 
intrusted to the Dominicans. Originally the church 
was opposed to torture. For a long time the church 
permitted no confessions extorted by that means. But 
Pope Innocent IV, in 1252, by the “Bull” Ad extur- 
panda announced that it could be used to discover 
heresy, and Urban IV later backed him up in this. The 
Inquisition had been started under Gregory IX, who 
had been Pope prior to either of these, but they gave 
it the impetus that made its task effective. Judges 
were chosen chiefly from the Dominican order, who 
had it strictly in charge to discover heresy. Court was 
conducted in secret, and the defendant was denied 
either adviser or witnesses. Not even the names of 
his accusers were given the prisoner. Much less was 
he allowed to face them before the judges. The only 
concession made him was that he could name any he 
knew to harbor ill will against him. To such as ap- 
peared to lie or to those who proved obdurate, tor- 
ture was applied by lay officials. By the law of the 
church torture could be used only once in each case. 
Bright minds soon found a way of getting around this 
rule. They decreed that torture “might be contin- 
ued.” It often was, with astounding heartlessness. 
Black-haired priests going into the torture chamber to 


222 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


secure the recantation of disapproved beliefs are said 
to have come out white-haired with the horror of 
the performance. Incidentally, “there was never a 
case of acquittal pure and simple.” Penalties, fastings, 
pilgrimages, scourgings, the wearing of tokens of dis- 
grace, fines, confiscation of goods (very popular, be- 
cause the spoils were shared with the lay officials), all 
forms of imprisonment and various forms of death 
—these were meted out by the judges as they deemed 
fitting in each case. And for all this they had scrip- 
tural authority in the words: “Compel them to come 
in.” They thought they did God service! 

Wholesale slaughter.—Often the issue of religious 
freedom was joined with some form of struggle 
against tyranny or oppression. In such cases religious 
hatred made the conflict the more bitter. Alva, while 
at his abominable work in Holland, wrote his master, 
Philip Il: “If I take Alkmaar, I am resolved not to 
leave a single creature alive; the knife shall be put to 
every throat.” Most frightful of all single orgies of 
bloodshed was the massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s 
Day, August 24, 1572, when the Huguenots, having 
been deceived into thinking themselves safe, were set 
upon in Paris by the forces of the crown. That day, 
and for weeks following, thousands were killed in the 
hope that thus Protestantism might be wiped out in 
France. In the reign of Charles I] of England more 
than eight thousand died in confinement as a penalty 
for their faith. 

Protestants have been persecuted by Catholics. But 
so have Catholics by Protestants, and Jews by both! 
Even the various divisions of Protestantism have been 
at each other’s throats. No more pernicious perversion 
of the message and method of Jesus is to be found 
in the annals of the church named with his name. 


RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 223 


How THE STRUGGLE Was Won 


Infiuence of the reformers.—Luther’s “right of 
private judgment” really entailed religious liberty. 
When he took his stand for the unrestricted perusal of 
the Bible, “the Bible in the hands of the laity,” he gave 
a momentum to the movement for religious liberty 
such as no one had given it before. Upon the broad 
platform of “the right of private judgments” all sects 
and parties could take their stand. It did result in a 
great diversity of opinion. But it also resulted in that 
far greater thing—freedom! 

Calvin, too, made his mistakes. Not all of his 
apologists together—and he has had a lot of them— 
have been able to remove the stain of his high-handed 
heartlessness in ordering Servetus killed. Yet it 
remained for John Calvin, “the only international re- 
former,” to make religious liberty stand forth as a 
thing to be prized. Calvinism was what Protestantism 
at its best always is—democracy in religion. Calvin 
went about it in thorough fashion. He contended for 
a democratic church. He denounced the hierarchy of 
the Roman Catholic Church on the ground that 
“church officials, according to the New Testament, en- 
tered upon their charges, not by the word of an eccle- 
siastical overlord, but with the consent of those they 
served.” In addition, he affirmed that adequate knowl- 
edge of God came, neither from Popes nor church 
councils, but from the Scriptures. From his telling 
blows the papacy has not recovered, nor is it going to. 

William Penn felt that “no man nor number of men 
upon earth hath power or authority to rule over men’s 
consciences in religious matters.” Roger Williams 
held that ‘‘all men may walk as their consciences per- 
suade, every one in the name of his God.” And John 


224 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


Locke wrote that “true and saving religion consists in 
the inward persuasion of the mind, without which 
nothing can be acceptable to God.”’ Other voices were 
lifted in behalf of liberty. 

That men to-day can hold such religious beliefs as 
they think right, none daring to molest them or to make 
them afraid, must be attributed in large measure to 
the courage and vision of the Reformers. As time 
went on their opinions were translated into legislation 
in the various Protestant countries. In some parts of 
the world, notably Peru, the issue is immensely alive, 
and is calling forth a heroism full worthy of our deep- 
est admiration. The Anabaptists were first among 
moderns to demand religious liberty for all. In our 
own country religious toleratiom was first offered in 
Roman Catholic Maryland, but the Baptists in Rhode 
Island were the first to champion complete religious 
liberty. 

Other voices.—The toleration of differing opinions 
has had distinguished advocacy. John Robinson, 
father of Puritanism in New England, wrote: “It is 
no property of religion to compel to religion what 
ought to be taken up freely; no man is forced by 
Christians against his will, seeing that he that wants 
faith and devotion is unserviceable to God, and that 
God . . . would not be worshiped of the unwilling, 

. and, lastly, considering that neither God is 
pleased with unwilling worshipers, nor Christian so- 
cieties bettered, nor the persons themselves.” From 
such rugged common sense we are not likely again to 
escape. Men like Wesley did much to destroy what 
Silvester Horne called ‘“‘the most fatal of the church’s 
dreams’—uniformity of opinion. Speaking of the 
societies he was establishing, Wesley took pains to 
point out one circumstance peculiar to them: “They 





RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 228 


do not impose, in order to their admission, any opin- 
ions whatever. ... They think and let think. One 
condition, and one only, is required—a real desire to 
save their soul. Where this is, it is enough; they desire 
no more: they lay stress upon nothing else: they ask 
only, “Is thy heart herein as my raathe If it be, give 
me thy hand.’ ” 

Present dangers.—It would be folly to suppose 
that all danger to religious liberty is past. There is 
the old danger from the church that never tolerates 
religious liberty except where it cannot help itself. 
There is the new one from that type of so-called ortho- 
doxy that has been widely heralded as “fundamental- 
ism.” Such orthodoxy, as one man has brilliantly put 
it, “is like alcohol—it kills every living thing, and 
preserves every dead one.” “Modernism” is not im- 
mune. Its adherents can be and some of them are as 
intolerant and dogmatic as the most extreme “Funda- 
mentalist.” Against all such intolerance, Christians 
resolutely set themselves. Truth must win upon its own 
merits, not through force or through outside authority. 
As Dean Inge has said, “Christianity is essentially a 
struggle for an independent spiritual life, and it can 
only exert its true influence in the world when it real- 
izes that spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and 
when it stands upon its own foundations without those 
extraneous supports which begin by strengthening a 
religion and end by strangling it.’’” 


“How foolish, then, you will agree 
Are those who think that all must see 
The world alike, or those who scorn 
Another who, perchance, was born 


*From The Philosophy of Plotinus. Longmans, Green & Co. 
Used by permission, 


226 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


Where, in a different dream than theirs, 
What they called Sin to him were prayers?’”? 


For Discussion 


1. Define religious liberty. Describe it. 

2. Does it make any difference what a man believes? 
Why? 

3. Discuss the alleged intolerance of the Knights of 
Columbus and the Ku Klux Klan. 

4. Is religious liberty still curtailed for political, eccle- 
siastical, or economic reasons? To what extent? 

5. Do you think the Roman Catholic would ever again 
attempt anything like the Inquisition? Would 
Protestants persecute folks for religious beliefs? 

6. Does respect for religious liberty mean that our 
religious preferences should play no part in the exer- 
cise of the franchise? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 
Crooker, Joseph H., The Winning of Religious Liberty. 
Versteeg, J. M., Christ and the Problems of Youth, Chap. 
Wi . 
Joseph, Oscar L., Freedom and Advance. 


*The Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes. Reprinted by per- 
mission of Frederick A. Stokes Company. 


CHAPTER XXIV 
DEMOCRACY 


PROFESSOR CONKLIN tells us that “the past evolu- 
tion of man has occurred almost entirely without con- 
scious human guidance; but with the appearance of 
intellect, the capacity of profiting by experience, a new 
and great opportunity and responsibility has been given 
man of directing rationally and ethically his future 
evolution.”?. Every indication is that the race both 
intends and tends to direct its future evolution by 
means of democracy. 


Tue Mission oF DEMOCRACY 


Christ and democracy.—Democracy appears to be 
in the order of things. The world cannot get on with- 
out it. Men have long dimly perceived what we now 
see more clearly, that if we wish to live at all on this 
earth, we shall have to learn how to live together. To 
do this we must learn to appreciate and cooperate— 
two items that go far toward making democracy in- 
evitable. 

Clearly, then, democracy did not originate with 
Christianity. It was here before that came. Greece 
and Rome knew it before Jesus was born, but not in 
its present form, nor with its present meaning. For 
modern democracy, however, Christianity shoulders 
much of the responsibility. 

Jesus has been called the world’s Great Democrat. 


*The Direction of Human Evolution. Reprinted by permis- 
sion of Charles Scribner’s Sons, publishers. 


227 


228 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


This does not allude to any political preference of his. 
It refers to how he lived and what he taught. He be- 
lieved himself one sent of God, one in whom God was; 
“Tt and my Father are one’; yet he made no false pre- 
tensions to superiority, but was in constant and sym- 
pathetic touch with the people, and consorted even 
with the outcast and the sinner. He could not look 
at a crowd without wanting to befriend it. And he 
was eager and alert to give those he met a helping 
hand. He believed in the oneness of folks: “One is 
your Father, and all ye are brethren.” He taught that 
his heavenly Father made the sun to shine on the just 
and unjust alike. An outstanding scholar, not par- 
ticularly partial to evangelical Christianity, once con- 
fined his studies to the “synoptic”? Gospels, and con- 
cluded that Jesus taught “consideration of community 
good as a deciding factor in conduct, the importance and 
significance of the individual, equality of opportunity, 
and a friendly attitude toward foreigners.”* These 
are precisely the items that enter into the making of 
modern democracy. Without these it would die. The 
title he has been given fits him very well. To Jesus 
democracy owes not only momentum but direction. 
What is democracy?—Democracy, just yet, is but 
little understood. There are still many who think of 
it chiefly in the political sense. To them it is the rule 
of the people; government in which the will of the ma- 
jority of qualified citizens rules, or in which the will of 
the whole people obtains in all important matters ; “gov- 
ernment with the consent of the governed.’ For them 
it has to do with means rather than with ends. Hence 
they make “democracy” synonymous with “republic.” 
They are thinking of a form of government. They have 


*A. W. Slaten, What Jesus Taught. Reprinted by permission 
of The University of Chicago Press, publishers. 


——— 


DEMOCRACY 229 


political machinery or political control in mind when 
they speak of democracy. Plato called democracy “‘the 
best form of bad government.” The average man 
has adopted that definition, minus the word “bad.” 
But, then, the average man is no Plato! 

Yet democracy is something more than common po- 
litical privileges. It is less a different government of 
people than a different estunate of them. In the Greek 
democracy this estimate was based on superiority—of 
birth or property holdings. In modern democracy 
the estimate is based on equality. It is, as the Italian 
patriot Mazzini expressed it, “the progress of all 
through all under the leading of the wisest and best.” 

Equality.—The modern democratic outlook comes to 
us from the Reformation. The Reformation taught 
the revolutionary idea that all believers are priests. 
This elevated all men to the same spiritual status. It 
did away with those distinctions in religion and the 
church which the Roman Catholic Church had taken 
such pains to make. “By making men equal in the 
highest things of faith, it opened up the new way for 
equality and fraternity in the lesser material things. 
Only now are we beginning to understand the demo- 
cratic impulse of the Reformation, which has so long 
been held back. We know that the common rights of 
all souls, the universal priesthood of believers, neces- 
sitated general, popular education. In settling the mat- 
ter of public education the Reformation, which cannot 
‘ suffer illiterates, because it claims the right of everyone 
to read and search the Scriptures for himself, was the 
greatest aid to vital democracy in thought and life.’’$ 

The modern democratic movement began several 
centuries after the Reformation. It had its inception 


‘J. W. A. Haas. Reprinted from The Lutheran by permis- 
sion. 


230 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


in the French Revolution, which was anti-church rather 
than anti-Christian. Rousseau was its outstanding 
prophet. Yet what this eccentric genius really did was 
to raise the same cry of equality the Reformation had 
raised. But no one can say for sure with whom the 
slogan of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” originated. 
That they were all written deep in the message Jesus 
brought no unbiased student can doubt. The French 
Revolution which, as Carlyle saw it, came with “truth 
clad in hell-fire,’ uncovered more of the meaning of 
these words than had previously been commonly 
understood. Nor must the name of Rousseau, the ec- 
centric and turbulent thinker, be neglected when one 
tries to trace the development of democratic ideas. But 
American democracy is not indebted to the French rev- 
olution as much as some seek to make out. One must 
go to the Puritan rebellion, to the English revolution, 
and to our own, if one wishes to see more truly whence 
our democracy came. 

But no one must suppose that democracy is simply 
the product of successive revolutions. Long before 
any of these we have mentioned occurred, the Roman 
Catholic Church was practicing, if not preaching, 
democracy. One could find real democracy behind 
monastery doors. There all classes mingled in the 
spirit of brotherhood. And in the church itself there 
was not a little of it. During much of its history one 
did not need social standing, wealth, or lineage to 
enter the priesthood of the church, and to strive for 
the highest of its honors. It came to be a token of 
honor when a Pope had mounted from poverty to the 
greatest position in the church. Yet it cannot be said 
that many who, since the days of Rousseau, advocated 
democracy, thought it through. If our fathers had 
done so, the statement that “‘all men are born equal’ 


DEMOCRACY 231 


would have been taken for poetry, never for prose. 
Yet théy were all after a massive truth. They were 
trying to express their reverence for humanity. For, 
as Eucken has said, the only thing that can give democ- 
racy meaning is “the conviction that humanity has 
spiritual relations, tuat each individual has a value for 
himself and for the whole because he is a part of a 
larger spiritual world.” 


THE CHALLENGE OF DEMOCRACY 


Equity.—It is one thing to assert equality and an- 
other thing to achieve it. Here lies one huge task. 
We must provide the equality we profess. It used to 
be said that what we need is equality of opportunity. 
But that was a poor way of putting the matter. What 
we want—and need—is equity of opportunity. Equal- 
ity of opportunity respects our likenesses, but not our 
differences. Equity of opportunity respects our dif- 
ferences as well as our likenesses. Possibilities for 
some are impossibilities for others. It is not fair to 
give the same opportunity to all. It is fair to give all 
the same opportunity. Democracy is equa-bility rather 
than equality in all the relations of life. Only ever- 
lasting justice can secure lasting prosperity. Democ- 
racy must bring adequate life to all. Hence Pasteur 
considered democracy “that order in the State in which 
every man has a chance to make the most of himself, 
and knows that he has the chance.” Jesus said he came 
to bring fullness of life. We can scarcely expect to be 
his followers unless we too strive to bring this. What 
are we doing about it? 

Difficulties in the way.—Those who attempt to se- 
cure equity of opportunity for all will not have 
easy sailing. So many things arise to bar the way to 


232 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


success. Democracy is constantly up against the task 
of putting its own house in order. 

Democracy is always in danger of its popularity. 
Familiarity with its forms is likely to bring contempt 
for its spirit. It easily disintegrates into mob rule. 
“A crowd,” says Edward Dean Martin, “goes to its 
death fighting bogeys.’ With “crowd” he does not 
mean many bodies that are together but many minds 
that are alike. Public opinion is all too often crowd- 
opinion, assidiously fostered by political manipulators 
or representatives of class interests. People who are 
not up on a subject are easily wrought up about it. 
They are likely to do what Jupiter is said to have 
counseled his advocate to do, when with the other 
gods they were going to take part in a philosophical 
discussion: “Do not argue. They will beat you at 
argument. Curse and rail. That is your strong 
point.” In a democracy people have to be not only 
well-balanced but well-trained. 

Lip-praise! Democracy is therefore in constant 
danger of its demagogues. When they extol democ- 
racy you had better watch their step. You will usually 
find them lovers of slogans and catch-phrases and 
watchwords. They do not go very deeply into the 
meaning of them—for a good reason! If they did, it 
would be all up with them. Loud in their praises of 
a democracy that has not as yet molested their special 
interests, they have little or no use for the genuine 
article. People, in a democracy, cannot afford to give 
unquestioning acquiescence to great words and noble 
phrases, which all too easily become cheap claptrap, 
used to prevent the very thing it pretends. We should 
be zealously on guard against tawdry shibboleths. 

Democracy is in danger of its privileges. A true 
believer in democracy is willing and eager to share its — 


DEMOCRACY 233 


responsibilities as well as its privileges. He can be 
counted on to share the burdens as well as the benefits 
of his government and of society. Democracy will go 
by default unless those who demand its rights also per- 
form its duties. 

“Blind leaders of the blind.”—Democracy is in 
danger of its leaders. They are likely to listen all too 
much to popular opinion and to mold their conduct to 
popular caprice. Bishop Quayle, in one of his famous 
lectures, used to say that a politician knows what the 
people want, a statesman knows what God wants. This 
is, of course, not a precise definition. But it suggests 
that a democracy is safe only when its politicians prac- 
tice statesmanship. This calls for real heroism and 
for no little martyrdom! 

Democracy is in danger of its followers. The mass 
of people is likely to be content with less than the best. 
It is not likely to wax enthusiastic over the more ad- 
vanced proposals of science or statecraft or education 
or religion. Many of its followers are conservatives. 
They cling to the old and suspect the new. Others 
among its followers are radicals, who mistake the 
newest for the best. Unless a democracy can develop 
on a large scale the scientific temper and method, it 
will fall upon its own sword. 


THE FuturE oF DEMOCRACY 


_ An ethical democracy.—From what has been said 
it will, we trust, be clear that but few are working at 
democracy, and that it has not thus far been very 
widely applied. What democracy needs is men and 
women who are willing to go through with it, lead 
where it may. 

For the implications of democracy are stupendous. 
They are sure to take us far. It is no mean task to 


234 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


secure equity of opportunity for all. Democracy was 
stated to mean: “The progress of all through all under 
the leading of the wisest and best.” Consider a little 
what that means. 

“Going on to perfection.”’—If democracy is prog- 
ress, it is progress of democracy. There was a time 
when people said, “The king can do no wrong.” This 
habit is apparently a difficult one to dislodge, for there 
are those who assert it of democracy, or, rather, of 
their brand of it. People must be put on guard against 
the bland assumption that their type of democracy is 
infallible; that it cannot possibly be improved upon. 
Our fathers were not afflicted with any such conceit. 
They left room for improvement in the Constitution 
and made careful provision for its amendment. New 
experiments in democracy ought to be not only per- 
mitted but welcomed. Self-government is not neces- 
sarily good government; it is only a method by which 
we hope to procure it. 

Democracy is for man, not man for democracy.— 
“The progress of all through all’ means progress not 
only of democracy but im democracy. Emerson said 
that “the best political economy is the care and culture 
of man.” How much care do we take of men when 
the majority of them as yet have neither the means nor 
the time for culture? If the chief concern of democ- 
racy is people, no realm of common interest can be ex- 
empted from its application. Industry and religion 
and education will have to become increasingly demo- 
cratic. Economic despotism cannot survive in a 
democracy. The progress of all cannot take place 
until there is economic freedom. Industry now in- 
quires, “What sort of worker will this man be?” But 
the inquiry democracy will make of industry is, “What 
sort of man will this worker be?” John Dewey states 





DEMOCRACY © 235 


that “a truly democratic society is one in which all 
share in useful service and all enjoy a worthy leisure.” 
So much for the care of man. As for his culture, we 
have only begun at that. In the United States only one 
out of every three graduate from grammar school, one 
out of every twenty complete a high-school education, 
and one out of every one hundred graduate from 
college. | 
The need for practical pilots.—“Under the leading 
of the wisest and best.’ Mazzini depended on “the 
wisest and best” for “the progress of all through all.” 
It is to Christians that democracy must look for its 
protection. ‘They are to see to it that it is kept pure; 
that it is saved from misrepresentation, misinterpreta- 
tion, abuse. They must show folks where it leads, 
what its implications are. They must incarnate and 
inculcate that reverence for personality characteristic 
alike of Christ and democracy. They must go to work 
in church and school and press and Legislature and 
drama and literature to impress people with the hu- 
manity, and hence Christianity, of equity of oppor- 
tunity for all. There is no finer piece of business to be 
done than to train people who live in a peel to 
live up to it. 
Democratic evangelists !—This leads to a further 
observation. It 1s also to “the wisest and best” that 
democracy must look for its projection. Indeed, we 
are less in need of people who can explain democracy 
than of those who have courage enough to apply it. 
To give substance to the belief that personality is 
always to be respected and to strive, in business, in pol- 
itics, in every realm, to secure equity of opportunity 
for all, is not easy. What makes it difficult is that 
most people shout for democracy until it steps on their 
toes, then they turn to rend it. It is but another way 


2360 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


of putting this to say that “the wisest and best” have 
often been crucified. When it comes to this big busi- 
ness of getting democracy down out of the clouds and 
breathing life into it, we may well put up the sign: 
“None but heroes need apply.” 

What is your caliber? 


For Discussion 


1. “Democracy,” said Woodrow Wilson, “is possible only 
among peoples of the highest and steadiest political 
habit.” Measured by this statement, will our democ- 
racy endure? 

2. Is the Constitution of the United States thoroughly 
democratic? Is it Christian? 

3. Are other modern democracies more Christian than 
ours? 

4. Can our democracy exist without the public-school 
system? Does it need any other? 

5. In what sense is Protestantism democracy in religion? 

6. Does modern high-school or college life make young 
people democratic? What is it doing for you? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


McConnell, Francis J., Democratic Christianity. 
Diefendorf, Dorr F., The Christian in Social Relation- 
ships, Chap. IX. 


CHAPTER XXV 
CITIZENSHIP 


Tuus far we have been thinking of “the freedom 
with which Christ doth set us free.” Something yet 
remains to be said as to the use of that freedom. For 
this freedom, according to Christ, is not simply some- 
thing to enjoy but something to employ. Our privi- 
leges are our opportunities. Nowhere is this view of 
freedom more necessary just now than in the realm of 
citizenship. 


PAGAN OR CHRISTIAN? 


The early Christians.—Time was when Paul was 
glad to boast that he was “a citizen of no mean city.” 
Time came when he openly rejoiced that his “‘citizen- 
ship’ was “in heaven.” With increasing intensity the 
early Christians came to share that view. One can 
readily understand why this should have been so. 
They were, for the most part, on the outs with the 
authorities. This was through no fault of their own; 
it was inevitable. Having embraced a religion other 
than the prevalent one, they found themselves in poor 
standing in the community and were made the butt of 
ridicule, were hated, and subjected to persecution. 
They could no longer give unquestioning obedience to 
the state. They went for final orders to a higher 
source. From the first this issue was for them clearly 
drawn. Peter and John, in the very beginning of the 
morning of the church, frankly asked the rulers of the 
people and of the church “whether it is right before 


237 


238 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


God to obey you rather than God.” It took courage 
to do that! Their question left the authorities non- 
plussed; they did not know what to make of it. And 
ever since this has been a question that simply would 
not down. In every age intrepid souls have put it to 
the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Peter and John 
started something back there in Jerusalem. They 
forced the issue on all Christendom. It never will be 
settled until it is settled right. 

The hope beyond.—In that early day, as the oppo- 
sition of the state to the church increased, Christians 
lost more and more their relish for citizenship. What 
with death staring them so often in the face, the one 
thing left to them was the hope that beyond this life 
they might get to a commonwealth in which they at 
last might be free. The “better country” they desired 
was “a heavenly.” Like those spiritual giants of old, 
at remembrance of whom they took heart, they “con- 
fessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the 
earth.” They were sure that God would not be 
“ashamed to be called their God,’ and that he had 
“prepared for them a city,” of which “the Lamb is 
the light.” In its earliest manifestations Christianity 
gave little promise of furthering citizenship. 

The leaven at work.—And yet there was that in 
Christianity which would one day make citizenship 
sublime. Augustine clearly saw that, and in his City 
of God issued a clarion call for citizenship which, 
echoed from time to time, found its greatest expression 
in the Geneva Calvin made. Theoretically, at least, the 
church early set out to change the conception that the 
state is supreme. Actually, it must be confessed that 
most of us yet dance whenever the state “pipes unto 
us.” But progress has been made, not the least in the 
opinion the state now entertains of itself. Then for a 


CITIZENSHIP 239 


long time the church held the place the state had once 
held. Jt claimed to be supreme, even over the state. 
It took a Reformation to make people see that Chris- 
tianity was greater and more authoritative than any 
church. It may take yet another Reformation to make 
people see that Christianity is more than creed. Yet 
the Christian conceptions of freedom and service have 
made and are making citizenship something more than 
the selfish enjoyment of the protection or benefits a 
country may afford, or the docile submission to “the 
powers that be.” 


CHRISTIAN CITIZENS 


Enter: the social gospel—We have already re- 
counted the achievement of Christianity in giving 
people a voice and a share in government. But citizen- 
ship has come to mean even more than that. At least 
Christian citizenship has. We now see that citizenship 
itself must be seen through Christian eyes; that its 
duties must be performed in the Christian spirit, and 
that Christian principles must be incorporated in all 
matters of public concern. This is in keeping with that 
extension of the gospel to all the affairs of life which 
has come to be known as the social gospel. 

Giving citizenship conscience.—When we talk of 
the social gospel we mean no new or strange gospel; 
it is simply the good news of Jesus applied to our 
social relations and embodied in our social institutions. 
Not everyone who names the name of Christ goes far 
enough in that name. There are still many who accept 
the life and teachings of Jesus for their personal guid- 
ance but are unwilling to trust his leadership for all 
of life. So Frederick II of Prussia feared that “the 
prince who remembers that he is a Christian is lost’ ; 
and Bernhardi taught that “Christian morality is per- 


240 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


sonal and social, but can never become political.” But 
Christ taught one standard of conduct for any and all 
parts of life. Oliver Cromwell justly insisted that 
character is the first requisite for a public servant, and 
Grover Cleveland’s dictum holds good for all time: 
“A public office is a public trust.” 

Christian patriotism.—Here, then, a great task de- 
volves upon the church. It must clarify and sanctify 
public opinion; it must bring the spiritually indolent 
and the spiritually backward under conviction of state 
and community sin. It must Christianize patriotism. 
If you think this easy, try it out on some friend. No; 
first of all put in some work on yourself, for not any 
of us find it easy to get away from that exclusive in- 
terest in our own land, which in our hearts we know to 
be unchristian, and which makes idols out of our 
symbols and flag. It is not easy to reach the view 
Mazzini voiced: “Nationality is sacred to me because 
I see in it the instrument of labor for the good and 
progress of mankind.’ Yet one is not really Chris- 
tian until one is willing to say with William Watson: 


“Best they honor thee 
Who only honor in thee what is best.”2 


We shall have to get rid of the idea that we have 
spoken the last word in good government; that ours 
is the most perfect form of government that can possi- 
bly be devised. We shall have to be on the lookout 
expectantly for even superior forms. We shall have 
to be on guard lest high-sounding phrases and rounds 
of patriotic applause be substituted by us for disin- 
terested citizenship. To quote Mazzini again, who, 
free-lance though he was, entertained the most Chris- 


*The Collected Poems of William Watson. Dodd, Mead & 
Co., publishers. Used by permission. 


CITIZENSHIP 241 


tian of views concerning the state: “The end of pol- 
itics 1s to apply the moral life to the civil organization 
of a country.” Let any young friend of mine, there- 
fore, who is thinking seriously of going into politics 
(the only way to think of it) note that the end of pol- 
itics is neither his election nor his reelection, nor his 
enthronement as a popular hero as one proficient in all 
the lingo of narrow nationalism. 

Positive patriotism.—The church has felt called 
upon to do a lot of reforming, and there still remains 
a good bit for it to do. The country is under great 
debt to the church for such “meddling in politics.” 
So many noble people have glorified this company that 
one is loath to say even a word that might sound de- 
rogatory. But in reforming, defeats lie close to vic- 
tories. Reforming too often fails to be re-forming; 
too much emphasis is placed on getting rid of evil and 
not quite enough on substituting the good. The church 
must train men and women in positive patriotism. 
Law-observance should give Christians grave concern, 
but law-improvement should concern them even more. 
Not lower taxes, but better schools, should be consid- 
ered first. It is not evils, but righteousness, that must 
be stressed the more. 


Doinc Our Part 


The exercise of the franchise.—Christian citizen- 
ship calls us ali to consistent careers of community serv- 
ice. The exercise of the franchise is the most obvious 
part of this. There is no better way to play into the 
hands of the forces of evil than for Christian people 
to fail to vote in the primaries or on election days. 
We are to serve God with the ballot. Yet this is but 
one of the duties Christian citizenship requires. We 
are to clean up the city; and not infrequently that 


242 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


means that we are to clean it out! It has been humor- 
ously said that “ ‘the wicked flee when no man pur- 
sueth’; but they make a little better time when the 
righteous get after them.” But to do this, and to 
effect the more positive good, the Church of Christ 
must present a united front. 

The amusement situation.—Commercialized 
amusements have a relentless way of tramping the high 
and holy under foot. Professionalism, commercial- 
ism, and “spectatoritus’’—the fact that most of us are 
simply lookers-on rather than participants—cast a 
blight upon the whole amusement realm. If Chris- 
tianity can set men free from the harmful elements in 
these three, it will effect a new liberation for us all. 
Christianity has had tussles with the amusement prob- 
lem heretofore. It will never be forgotten how Tele- 
machus jumped into the arena in protest against the 
brutality of gladiatorial combats, and how his death 
at the hands of the frenzied mob sickened both the 
emperor and the world of them. Yet many forms of 
amusement have not improved much with the years. 
The battle of Waterloo, it was said, was won on the 
playing fields of Eton. It is conceivable that Chris- 
tianity too shall win its crowning battle on the playing 
fields. At all events, every citizen can here lend a 
hand. Let us see to playgrounds and plays and play, 
in no censorious spirit, but as enthusiasts for “fullness 
of joy.” 

The newspapers.—The press needs the impact of 
Christian citizens, especially when it is in the hands 
of men who make no decent attempt to follow Jesus 
Christ. It too has had to reckon overmuch with the 
cash register. “Great is the suppress!” But here there 
is more of hope. While amusement purveyors have 
shown deep obstinacy in regard to their affairs, news- 


CITIZENSHIP 243 


paper men have been, and still are, bravely facing the 
complex ethical problems which their craft involves. 

“Charity.”—In matters of public health, sanitation, 
living, and working conditions, citizens ought to be 
both interested and informed. These have been dis- 
cussed in other sections of this book. But in every 
city there are humane institutions which need to be 
maintained. Christianity has always majored in hu- 
mane and considerate treatment of the unfortunate and 
the unprivileged. The blind, the orphans, the aged, 
the deaf and dumb, the poor, even animals, have re- 
ceived of the grace of Christ. Look over the director- 
ates of the Associated Charities, Red Cross agencies, 
relief agencies, hospitals, or social settlements in your 
town, and see how generally they are composed of 
those who openly follow Jesus Christ. And when 
it comes to giving for humane and benevolent work, 
see what a large percentage of money comes from 
Christian folks. Yes, and see how these institutions 
and these movements had their inception in minds that 
thought like Christ’s. Surely, then, we, his new fol- 
lowers, will not fail him in these. 


Now you can understand why the New Testament 
is all the while saying that Christ sets men free. This 
is exactly what he has been doing. This is what he 
is doing still. His liberation has been spiritual as well 
as political By way of Jesus democracy has come. 
Those whom he sets truly free will not abuse freedom 
but will use it so that life will be brought to its best. 
All of which is proof that Jesus may justly be called 
“the liberator divine.” 


For Discussion 
1. Should there be any special intellectual or educational 


244 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


qualification for those who wish to be occupants of 
public offices ? 

2. Should parties foster partisanship or patriotism? 

3. Does youth tend to be radical and age conservative in 
public matters? Why? Is that always, or neces- 
sarily the case? 

4. Should commercial amusements be kept closed Sun- 
days as a policy of good citizenship? If so, why? 
Which amusements do you deem permissible on that 
day? 

5. What is wrong with gambling? with pugilism? 

6. Is it Christian to expect the newspapers to be sup- 
ported by advertisers? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Mathews, Shailer, Patriotism and Religion. 

Robertson, A. T., The New Citizenship. 

Versteeg, John M., The Deeper Meaning of Stewardship, 
Chap. VIII. 


PART VII 


CHRISTIANITY AT WORK IN THE SOCIAL 
ORDER 


New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good 
uncouth, 

They must upward still and onward, who would keep 
abreast of Truth; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp fires! we ourselves must 
Pilgrims be, 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the des- 
perate winter sea, 

Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood- 
rusted key. 

—James Russell Lowell. 


pas 
? die \ “wy 

) 

nec Heit me 
Teste Me wa barat 


“Mia Le 
tite \ ; OF ae anneey 41 


ae 


iy iy ‘ot eae a 


Ret | ite . oone 


r| 
e Ao Oe) % hie 





CHAPTER XXVI 
STEWARDSHIP 


Has it ever occurred to you how often Jesus dis- 
cussed money? There were few subjects, if any, he 
more frequently touched. 


PROPERTY VERSUS PERSONALITY 


What Jesus feared.—Jesus was concerned for the 
havoc money worked with life. He met many whose 
finer impulses “the deceitfulness of riches” had 
“choked.” Rich and poor had acquired the acquisitive 
habit. All the while these people were spiritual strad- 
dlers. They were trying to serve both God and Mam- 
mon; Jesus told them just how impossible that was. 
Then one time there came to him a splendid youth. 
“Jesus, looking upon him, loved him.” This youth 
wanted to be let in on the secret of lasting life. Jesus 
told him the secret. And the promising youth went 
away sorrowful! He could not endure to give up his 
goods for the sake of his good. Experiences such as 
these deeply saddened Jesus. He was forced to con- 
clude that the rich are but seldom able to enter the 
kingdom of God. 

Wealth, which to Jesus was a trust to be used for 
God, was to most of the men he met a means to selfish 
ends. Hence, when “teaching in parables,” he told of 
a foolish man who had “ample stores laid up,” only to 
find that when God came and called for his soul: 


“The soul that he got from God 
He had bartered clean away.” 


247 


248 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


Jesus had plenty of occasion to see how heartless 
“money-making” often is. He pleaded with people to 
think the whole thing through. He felt that they were 
keeping their eyes entirely too close to their property; 
he besought them to look in more often on their souls; 
he implored them to consider the spiritual consequences 
of amassing and owning wealth. Seek the realm of 
God first, he advised them; then all other things will 
come right. Do not lay up treasures on earth; see how 
much you can store up in heaven. But his words fell 
on deaf ears. His early disciples heeded, as we learn 
from the book of Acts. They put their property at 
the disposal of the brotherhood. But even they soon 
fell to seeking wealth again. And the church, in the 
main, disregarded his teaching on property. 

The fear of the fathers——Yet many prophetic 
voices repeated the Master’s thoughts. It comes with 
something of a shock to us, who live in modern com- 
fort, in what blunt fashion these church fathers de- 
nounced and renounced wealth. Regard some of their 
utterances. Clement of Alexandria, who lived from 
155 to 220, said: “Christ does not debar me from prop- 
erty. But do you see yourself overcome and over- 
thrown by it? Leave it, throw it away, hate, renounce, 
flee it!” He is glad for the man who is “not the slave 
of the things he possesses, and does not carry them 
about in his soul nor bind and circumscribe his life 
with them but is ever laboring at some good or divine 
work.” 

John Chrysostom, in the fourth century, said: ““They 
that are possessed of lands and reap the wealth that 
springs from the earth—what can be more unjust than 
these, for if anyone were to examine how they treat 
their wretched and toil-worn laborers, he will see them 
to be more cruel than savages. . . . When the earth 


STEWARDSHIP 249 


yields and when it does not yield, they alike wear them 
out and grant them no indulgence, . . . and new kinds 
of usuries also do they devise, and not lawful, and 
this when he from whom it is exacted has a wife, is 
bringing up children, is a human being, and is filling 
their threshing floor and winepress by his own toil.” 

Basil similarly denounced people for their greed: 
“That bread which you keep belongs to the hungry; 
that coat which you preserve in your wardrobe, to the 
naked; those shoes which are rotting in your posses- 
sion, to the barefooted; that gold which you have hid- 
den in the ground, to the needy.” 

To come to a more recent and even more picturesque 
name, hear these words from one of John Wesley’s 
sermons: “Lay not up, saith the Lord. If in spite of 
this you do, and will lay up money or goods, .. . if 
you will add house to house and field to field, why do 
you call yourself Christian? You do not obey Jesus 
Christ.” 

Yet the church got rich!—You might think from 
the words we have quoted that the church took their 
message to heart. Not so! Christendom has never yet 
been ready to take their advice to heart. The church 
found the seats of the mighty mighty comfortable! It 
took all the power and property which its dubious con- 
version of the Roman Empire insured, and then went 
after more. In time the church became the greatest 
landowner in Europe. The day came when one half of 
all the German lands belonged to it. As if not content 
with this wealth, it utilized other means for its ag- 
grandizement. Simony, the selling of bishoprics and 
ecclesiastical offices to the highest bidder, reeked to 
heaven in shame. When, despite this practice, the 
papal pockets went flat, a regiment of salesmen was 
dispatched to dispose of indulgences. This maneuver 


250 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


was tried once too often; by it, the Pope came to grief, 
and Protestantism came to life. But here again the 
love of money worked its evil will. Luther owed his 
protection to the ruling and wealthy class. 

The monastic witness.—But what of those multi- 
tudes who went into monasteries and nunneries and 
who took among other vows, that of poverty? At 
first their testimony was undoubtedly impressive. Re- 
nouncing the pursuit of riches and worldly splendor, 
they witnessed with their lives that there is a greater 
aim than the pursuit of wealth. But the monastic 
orders also acquired vast properties. Now followed 
one of the most pathetic and heroic struggles in the 
church’s history. The Franciscans and Dominicans 
split. On the question of property-holding, Francis- 
cans who kept faith with their apostolic vow, were 
not only persecuted but even burned to death. Inter- 
ference with property rights has never been tenderly 
dealt with. 


PROPERTY AND PERSONALITY 


Why has wealth been sought?—Why has the lust 
for money had such hold on men? One answer to this 
question is that the desire for possession inheres in us 
all.. But that does not quite explain the inordinate 
desire. Men are willing to go great lengths for the 
sake of self-protection. They will seek more than 
their share so that they may be safe from want and 
from losing caste, as the poor as a class have done. 
Wealth brings freedom and prestige and puts power 
within reach. It makes higher learning possible and 
is the magic entrance to leisure and the arts. More- 
over, wealth can minister to one’s vanity or conceit. 
Men can ride roughshod over others when they know 
that these must look to them for bread. Do you won- 


STEWARDSHIP 251 


der that people are so reluctant to surrender the search 
for wealth? 

Along comes stewardship !—Horace Bushnell said 
years ago that one more revival was needed before 
Christianity could conquer in the earth: the revival of 
stewardship. This revival has come. Like many an- 
other one, it appears in some quaint forms. But it is 
revolutionizing our conceptions of wealth, or, to change 
the word, our conceptions of property. Stewardship 
is the recognition and acknowledgment of God in all 
property. It is the employment of the wealth of the 
world for divine purposes. It is the putting of all 
things to Christian uses. 

Putting first things first.—Some future historian, 
writing long years from now, will probably say of us 
that we had our values all mixed. We have for cen- 
turies put secondary things first. We have called a 
man rich because he had much rather than because he 
was much. We have allowed property to lord it over 
life. We have spoken and acted as if cash, and not 
character, were the big business of the world. Stew- 
ardship comes along to adjust the order of things. In 
so doing it but echoes the Master, who felt that if a 
man owned ali the world, but lost out on his soul, the 
bargain he had struck was poor. He might have had 
all the protection for himself and his family that soul 
could wish; he might have been able to vent his pride 
to his heart’s content and he might have had lots of 
fun in the “game” of amassing wealth. But when all 
that was over, he was fit for nothing except the rubbish 
heap of the universe. He was no good. He had 
“spent his labor for that which satisfieth not.” 


PROPERTY FOR PERSONALITY 
The enrichment of wealth.—NHarsh as these words 


252 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


may sound, they really are good news. For they assert 
afresh that the spiritual is supreme and hence su- 
premely important. When people make and use their 
money in Christian ways, and when all earth’s re- 
sources are put to Christian ends, wealth will be im- 
mensely enriched. No longer then will it take all it 
can out of people. It has ruthlessly crippled and 
dwarfed the lives of millions of folks. Now the spirit 
of Jesus comes to say, through stewardship, that this 
must not go on. Wealth henceforth must enrich the 
race. For, as Ruskin said in Unto This Last, “There 
is no wealth but life.” 

One-tenth for Christ?—There has been a deal of 
agitation, both in the church and out, to get people to 
give a tenth of their income to the church or to humane 
movements. Most of the churches have organized 
stewardship departments, though unfortunately these, 
for the most part, have been connected with the 
churches’ money-raising agencies. Stewardship is not 
essentially intended to fill the coffers of the church 
(even though it is sure to do so) ; it is intended to cor- 
rect the conscience of Christendom. Dr. J. M. M. 
Gray has warned that “the doctrine of stewardship 
must not be drawn for ecclesiastical profit.” It must 
be drawn for economic righteousness. 

Still, no one should lightly pass this proposition by. 
Experience has demonstrated that the tenth is a fairly 
good basis for the support of Christ’s cause. It is 
only when people attempt to hold you up at the point 
of a text, as they might at the point of a revolver, that 
you have a right to protest, and to protest out loud. 
The practice in itself is commendable. Young people 
do well to adopt it as a rule for life. Of course, the 
time may come when a tenth will not be enough. Some 
people earn, or at least, get so much more than others 


STEWARDSHIP 253 


that far more than a tenth of their income should go 
to the church. Many people are realizing that the best 
use of money is its use for the best. You may be very 
sure that the outcome of our income should be the 
success of Christ’s cause. 

The conversion of our concepts.—But stewardship 
goes deeper than the support of the church. It is con- 
cerned with property even more than with the proceeds 
of property, with economic activity more than with 
church activity, with the social order more than with 
proportionate giving. Stewardship calls upon us to 
Christianize the function of property as well as the 
way we dispose of our share of wealth. Hence stew- 
ardship undertakes to Christianize ownership. It 
raises searching questions about the rules under which 
property should be held or acquired; it examines those 
appalling inequalities in personal possessions which 
have made our social order the un-Christian thing it is. 
There is no use blinking the fact. Stewardship bids 
fair to change our property ideas, and to reverse the 
pursuit and the uses of wealth. 

Help the good work along.—This is another one 
of these movements that has come into being since the 
historic study of the life of Jesus began. In it those 
who are spiritually alert hear his voice again. But do 
not suppose that on this point the world is ready to 
hear him out. The movement is rapidly growing, but 
the going will be hard. You ought to make up your 
mind whether for you for life it is to be God or Mam- 
mon. Christ seeks to set you free from the tyranny of 
things. Give Christ your vote. And do not leave the 
polls until all the votes are in! 


For Discussion 


1. To how much property is a person entitled? 


254 ~ CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


2. Is it Christian for one to become a millionaire? 

3. Why are more crimes committed against property than 
against persons? 

4. Is it Christian to permit the inheritance of large 
wealth? 

5. How well could the church succeed if all its members 
tithed ? 

6. Is there not new danger in the increasing wealth of 
the church? Should churches have endowments? 
Should colleges? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Calkins, Harvey R., 4 Man and His Money. 

Smith, G. Birney, The Principles of Christian Living, 
Chap. XV. 

Versteeg, John M., The secon Meamng of Stewardship, 
Chap. V. 


CHAPTER XXVII 
PEACE 


Many people have taken war for granted. Univer- 
sal peace did not occur to them. Peace, in their 
thought, was simply the condition that existed in the 
intervals between wars. War seemed to them to be in 
the very order of things, even though many of them 
stood ready to lament with Juvenal the fact that 


“The human herd, unbroken and untaught, 

For acorns first, and grassy coaches fought; 

With fists, and then with clubs maintained the fray 

Till, urged by hate, they found a quicker way, 

And forged pernicious arms, and learned the art to slay.” 


THE CHURCH’S NEw INTEREST IN WAR 


Must we have war?—To-day there are not quite 
so many who hold that humanity is compelled to put 
up with war. Increasing numbers of men and women 
believe that war does not need to exist. They feel 
that it can, and therefore should, be outlawed. They 
are making war on war. They are unwilling to echo 
the proverbial platitudes about the desirability of peace. 
They are insisting upon its possibility. Nor do they 
conceive of peace as simply the state of not being at 
war. They think of it as the condition that results 
from understanding, mutual respect, and cooperation 
among nations. Centuries prior to Christ, the Greeks 
taught that Eirene, the goddess of peace, was the 
mother of Pluto, the god of wealth. The point made 
by these Greeks is more commonly understood in the 


255 


256 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


world to-day. Peace and prosperity come hand in 
hand. 

The church and war.—The church has not always 
been a determined enemy of war. At first, when still it 
was close to the life of Jesus, the fact that his teach- 
ings and spirit were opposed to war was acknowledged 
by all. Professor Harnack believes that, up to the 
middle of the second century, “the possibility of the 
Christian as a soldier did not exist.”” The early church- 
men were one in teaching that no Christian had the 
right to go to war. Not a few preferred death to serv- 
ice in the army, and the reason for their choice was 
invariably, ““A Christian cannot fight.” It was a cur- 
rent saying that “Jesus, in disarming Peter, disarmed 
all soldiers.” Tertullian called Christians “priests of 
peace.” 

But after Constantine chose the cross as an emblem 
in war it was not long before the church went over 
bodily into the camp of the warriors. Its leaders 
began to glorify war; they sanctioned and blessed it. 
And when the church sought to uphold or extend its 
power, it did not hesitate to make or cause war. The 
crusades, the wars between Catholics and Protestants, 
the post-Reformation wars, go to prove that the church 
does not come with clean hands on this score. An 
occasional voice was raised in earnest protest, but the 
church gave no heed. So it comes that an eminent his- 
torian (though guilty of confusing his terms) felt im- 
pelled to state that “with the exception of Mohammed- 
anism, no other religion has done so much to produce 
war as was done by the religious teachers of Christen- 
dom during several centuries.” 

The church and peace.—It seems inconceivable 
that for sixteen centuries the church should have made 
no effort to achieve ‘‘peace on earth.” But the facts 


PEACE 257 


are incontrovertible. The church did humanize many 
of the methods of war, and the ideals of chivalry it 
created have had a vast influence for good. By “the 
truce of God” the church, for a time, limited the 
periods in which blood might be shed. But the church 
did not set out to discourage the idea of war. Grotius, 
William Penn, Immanuel Kant, and others wrought 
definite plans for world peace; but the Christian 
Church did not come around to that. 

Of course there were reasons for this. Not even in 
the balmiest days of the Roman Catholic hierarchy was 
the church world-wide in scope or in program. It had 
all of humanity in mind only when it spoke of sin. It 
attempted to carry on major operations, not with the 
world at large, but with the world to come. It was 
other-worldly, rather than better-worldly, when it 
should have been both. The church did not see that 
its gospel must mean death to war. 

But the leaven was at work. Once the gospel of 
Jesus has “free course and is glorified” you may safely 
look for far-reaching results. Thus, when the Con- 
ference for the limitation of armaments was held in 
Washington, the representatives of the great Oriental 
powers were either outright Christians or had felt the 
impact of Christian education during their formative 
years. Hence the appeal could be made, and was 
made, on the basis of a common idealism. 

Ever since the carnage of the World War, the “will 
to peace” is gaining a strong hold on the church. In 
the course of the past few years, Protestant denomina- 
tions have vied with each other to express their ab- 
horrence of war, and their belief that now it ought to 
be done away with. The utterance of the largest 
Protestant communion shows the trend of the church: 
“Millions of our fellow men have died heroically in 


258 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


‘a war to end war.’ What they undertook must be 
finished by methods of peace. War is not inevitable. 
It is the supreme enemy of mankind. Its futility is 
beyond question. Its continuance is the suicide of 
civilization. We are determined to outlaw the whole 
war system.’”’ As never before, there is coming to the 
church the conviction Shakespeare voiced in King 
Lear: 


“Tf that the heavens do not their visible spirits 
Send quickly down to tame these vile offenses, 
*T will come, 

Humanity must perforce prey on itself, 
Like monsters of the deep.” 


THE CyHurcH’s NEw INTERPRETATION OF WAR 


A great classification.—But just what is war? 
Sherwood Eddy’s definition puts the facts fairly and 
lucidly: “War is a means of attempting to settle inter- 
national or civil disputes by armed military forces, 
through the organized destruction of life and prop- 
erty, in which each side seeks to impose its will upon 
the other by force.”* A description like this, while of 
course not complete, should convince any one at a 
glance that war, as now waged, has nothing in com- 
mon with Christianity. War is, as Doctor Fosdick 
has said, “utterly and irremediably unchristian.” It 
means “everything that Jesus did not mean and means 
nothing that he did mean.” From the outset of his 
ministry Jesus refused to advance his cause by coercion. 
His daring proposal was that people make the way 
of love their way of life. He urged them to overcome 
evil with good. Not by any stretch of the imagination 

* Reprinted from The Abolition of War, by Kirby Page and 


Sherwood Eddy, by permission of the publishers, George H. 
Doran Company. 


PEACE 259 


can you make of the Prince of Peace the patron saint 
of war. 

Theology of late has been at work on sin. It has 
convinced us that sin is a bigger thing than most of 
us as yet count for. It is social as well as individual. 
This truth is being emphasized increasingly by the 
church. Hence the Federal Council of the Churches 
of Christ in America calls war “the world’s chief col- 
lective sin.’ Theology has not always been at the 
service of mankind, but when it brands war as sin, it 
is doing its bit for the human race. This utter con- 
demnation of war by the Christian forces of the world 
is one of the greatest contributions Christianity could 
make toward securing a superior world. 

Faith in force.—But the church has more to do. It 
must break down the faith in force which people and 
nations still have. Few things Lloyd George has said 
will prove more memorable than these words of his: 
“What is the real problem in Europe to-day? I will 
tell you. ... Europe... still believes in force. 
Why? France says: ‘Alsace-Lorraine was torn from 
our side over fifty years ago. It was unjust; it was 
wrong; it was cruel; it was oppressive. Justice never 
gave it back to us. We had to lose one million four 
hundred thousand of our young men. . . . Force gave 
it back to us.” Poland! Poland says: ‘One hundred 
and fifty years ago our nationhood was destroyed. 
We were locked in the prison of great autocracies. We 
waited for Justice. We thought we could hear her 
passing footsteps, but they were simply the footsteps 
of our jailers outside. Force came at the end of one 
hundred and fifty years and unlocked the doors.’ The 
Russian peasant says to-day: ‘We never saw the light 
of liberty until the revolutionist came with his petard 
and blew our prison walls down!’ What does Ger- 


260 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


many say? Germany says: ‘We trusted to Justice. 
We trusted in a treaty. We are broken; we are shat- 
tered. Why? Weare disarmed. We have no force. 
We cannot trust the word of great nations. Force is 
the only thing that rules in the world.’ 

“This is why Europe believes in force to-day. But 
unless you stamp out that conviction civilization is 
doomed on this earth. Unless you can succeed in con- 
vincing Europe that right in the end is dominant over 
force I do not know what is going to happen. Unless 
you stamp out that feeling there will be no more civ- 
ization on this earth!’ 


But this is exactly what the church is here to do. It 
is here to stamp out that feeling. If the church is un- 
able to eradicate this feeling that force is the ultimate 
and final factor in life, it will be out of the running, 
and it will deserve to be. The race is between pug- 
nacity and magnanimity. It is the business of the 
church, through its vast educational agencies and its 
devotional programs, to destroy all that horde of 
ideas that trails in the wake of the feeling that force 
alone can prevail. War must be shown to be wrong; 
wrong in the assumptions it makes, the methods it 
uses, and the results it gets. Once let people see that 
war unsettles everything and settles nothing, and de- 
pendence on force will go for good. 


Puttinc AN ENp To WAR 


Faith in law.—But there is a positive side to the 
task of Christianity in regard to war. To love peace 
is one thing, to make it is another and a far bigger 
thing; the thing it is ours to do. “What we seek,” 
said Woodrow Wilson, “is the reign of law, based 
upon the consent of the governed, and sustained by 


Os 


PEACE 261 


the organized opinion of mankind.” Mr. Andrew 
Carnegie will be long remembered, not because he made 
millions, but because of his Christian convictions con- 
cerning war. His Hague Peace Palace, and the con- 
ferences set in motion there, while unable to stay di- 
rectly the onrushing madness of war, had a telling 
effect upon the thinking of men in all governments. 
The limitation of armaments by mutual agreement, 
courts of arbitration for international disputes, the 
getting together of the representatives of the nations 
for counsel and mutual advance, all have in them the 
promise of a better day for the world. 

But the outlawry of war will be no simple thing. 
We shall have to do hard thinking and patient teach- 
ing if we want to get totally rid of war. It will require 
experts. The whole problem of the security of the 
nations—even the weakest of them—will have to be 
faced. There will have to be a world-court which 
will be one in the full sense of that word, with 
actual laws to go by and definite rules of procedure. 
So complex are international relations that just 
the forming of the codes of law will require years 
of thought and effort: That it can be done there is 
no doubt. That it shall be done is the deep desire of 
all who, in Christ’s spirit, have the welfare of the race 
at heart. As President Coolidge has put it: “Univer- 
sal and assured peace, under the laws of nations, is 
an ideal to which all of us are devoted. . . . There 
is to-day a more definite and more widely entertained 
conception than ever before of the possibility to pre- 
vent war under an effective rule of law. This 1s the 
great advance. . . . It can hardly be doubted that the 
purpose and aspiration of human kind are definitely, 
intelligently, and insistently enlisted in the effort to 
make war an impossibility in this world.” 


262 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


Faith in love.—Christianity provides the spiritual 
and ethical motives for the overthrow of war and the 
establishment of permanent peace. “The empire is 
peace,” said Napoleon. But what of that? As Dr. 
George Elliott said, “so is a graveyard.” “They make 
a desolation and they call it peace,’ lamented an 
ancient seer. “They cry, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is 
no peace,’’ we read elsewhere. 

“The peace of God shall stand guard over your 
hearts,’ Paul assured his followers. In the last anal- 
ysis, maintaining the peace is the task of religion. The 
peace of man depends on the peace of God. Only 
under the Fatherhood of God can we have the brother- 
hood of man. Every person, therefore, who follows 
Christ into his intimate love of the heavenly Father, 
advances the cause of universal peace. It was an in- 
sight deeper than vouchsafed ordinary mortals that 
made Jesus say: “Blessed are the peacemakers: for 
they shall be called the children of God.” 


For Discussion 


Can war ever be done away with? Is war inevitable? 

2. Was the World War “a war to end war’? If so, 
why? If not, why not? 

3. What is the difference between struggle and war? 

4. When does patriotism breed war? When does it aid 
peace? 

5. What is the meaning of “pacifism”? Can a pacifist 
be a Christian? Must one be pacifist to be Chris- 
tian? 

6. What can an individual church do to outlaw war? 

What can you do? 


p= 


SUGGESTED READINGS 
Page, Kirby, and Eddy, Sherwood, The Abolition of War. 
Bower, L. F., The Economic Waste of Sin, Chap. II. 
McConnell, Francis J., Living Together, Chap. IV. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 
RACE 


TAKING advantage of people who are at a disad- 
vantage, and hatred of races other than our own, have 
worked and are working incalculable mischief in the 
earth. The desire to dominate, race hatred and greed 
have been the three demons responsible for the mak- 
ing of most wars, most slavery and most misery. 


THE RAcE PROBLEM 


An old hope.—These three have ever thwarted the 
nobler dreams of the race. Pope Hildebrand hoped 
to make of all the world one state which should have 
Christ as ruler. In this he but echoed the dream which 
the Roman Church has often entertained. In its own 
way, to be sure, but still very definitely, the papacy 
wanted to bring the whole world into unity. The 
trouble with it was that it did not try hard enough or 
wisely enough when it had its best opportunities. But 
such efforts as it made, greed and the love of power, 
and race enmity, in large part nullified. So with 
Protestantism. For years “heathen shores” were vis- 
ited far more frequently by slave-traders than by 
missionaries. 

Are races inherently inferior?—The problem is 
still upon us: Can the spirit of Jesus make all the 
race one? Of course the answer to this depends upon 
the question whether it ought to. Is it the business of 
Christianity to make the world one? Ought we to 
have “the blinding vision of one race, one color, and 

263 


264 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


one soul in humanity?” It is this that is being chal- 
lenged on every hand. Gobineau, with his The In- 
equality of the Races, started a long procession of 
books that attempt to tell us that the white man is by 
nature intended to be supreme. This view John Stuart 
Mill, and millions of other white people, have been 
and are unable to accept. “Of all the mean excuses 
by which men blind themselves to the fact that social 
and moral forces influence the spirit of man, none is 
so mean as that which ascribes the difference in be- 
havior to natural, innate differences.” In language 
more restrained, but equally intense, the churches have 
spoken out. Hence the largest Protestant denomina- 
tion in the United States declares officially that “Jesus 
Christ our Master stands for the oneness of our hu- 
manity and the equal worth of every human soul, re- 
gardless of race, birth, or color. . . . Had this vision 
been followed in its entirety and high challenge, we 
would have to-day a world of brotherhood instead of 
a world divided into suspicious and warring racial 
groups. . . . The most outstanding obstacle to the 
coming of the kingdom of God among the nations of 
the earth are these national and racial arrogancies. 
. . . The time has come for Christianity to assert its 
mind in no uncertain way and to bring to bear the 
pressure of its spirit... in the solution of this 
problem.” 

Facing the problem at home.—For problem it is! 
Before it other problems pale into insignificance. It 
is, first of all, a problem for us at home. We live in 
a welter of race relations. The Negro is up and doing. 
The Japanese has taken up his abode with us. The 
Jew is here in large numbers, and he proves hard to 
mix. People have come to us from well-nigh every 
land. They have not always surrendered their lan- © 


RACE 265 


guage or customs or traits, or the love of “the old 
country.” 

Some of these are here through no fault of their 
own. Others have come because they believed that 
the United States best represented their ideals, or felt 
that it guaranteed them the best opportunity for free- 
dom. But very many were brought here under false 
pretenses. Glib representatives of “big business” al- 
lured them with visions of instant wealth. By them 
immigration was fostered to bring “cheap labor’ here; 
labor ‘that would “stay put.” But on this score they 
missed their guess. In many of our cities “foreign- 
ers’ predominate. They set the public standards, dom- 
inate political life, set the pace in amusements, and 
control the religious institutions. There is none so 
remote among us but that his life is affected by those 
born in other lands or belonging to a different race. 
As this book is being written it is just twenty-five 
years ago that the writer himself landed in Hoboken, 
a badly frightened boy, clinging desperately to his 
father’s hand, what with so many strange sights and 
such a confusion of tongues! He trusts that he, for 
one, has not proved too much of a problem. Yet, you 
see, even in this book, a “foreigner” enters your 
life. 

How the problem deepens.—But when these for- 
eigners belong to a different race, with different 
habits and other standards of living, race riots easily 
come, and hate is readily engendered, especially when 
the show-sections of cities become “black belts” or 
“little Italies.” Surely, in our country, we shall have 
to learn how to live together. It will not do for one 
section of the population to say to the rest: “God has 
ordained us your superiors; hence we have the final 
say, and you are to stay ‘in your place’!” That way 


266 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


trouble lies. We shall have to rearrange our thinking. 
We shall have to tackle the problem not from the 
angle of nation or of race but from the spiritual angle. 
Is the spiritual supreme? Has God actually “made 
of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the 
face of the earth’? Have we all one heavenly Father 
and is One really Master of us all? Did Jesus live 
and die for them as well as for us? Questions such 
as these we shall have to answer in the spirit of Christ 
to solve the race problem at home. 


THE EXTENT OF THE PROBLEM 


“White supremacy.”—But this problem is bigger 
when we take it the world around. The whites have 
for long had their own way in the world. When the 
Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588 the ascendency 
of the English-speaking world began. But though 
the leadership has come into our hands, the white peo- 
ples have generally shared in the privileges. We form 
only about one fourth of the human family, yet con- 
trol almost nine tenths of its habitable area. ‘True 
to the habits of old, we have taken advantage of the 
weak and traded on race hatred. The white man’s 
greed, his treatment of the natives, his lust for land, 
his love of domination all have gone toward the mak- 
ing of endless misery. While this mistreatment has 
not been confined to the white race yet the white race, 
by means of its education and culture, is more culpa- 
ble than any other. The exploitation of the weak that 
the strong might have gain is the most horrible chapter 
written in history; and that chapter ts not yet closed. 

“The rising tide of color.’”—Only, the weak are 
neither as weak or as ignorant as they were just a little 
while ago. The World War, probably more than any 
other single event, has served to open their eyes to the 


——_ —_ 


RACE 267 


white man’s follies and to their own potentialities. 
They are becoming race-conscious. Great populations 
that a generation ago had not a word to say for them- 
selves now are openly out for “self-determination.” 
They are beginning to recognize problems of their 
own. They have congested populations, while the 
white man holds the land which would so neatly take 
care of them. They too are after markets and de- 
sirable waterfronts. 3 

Your enthusiast who strikes up the band for “‘white 
supremacy” has nothing on his dusky or yellow com- 
peer who lifts up the self-same cry, but with the color 
scheme varied a bit! In addition, not a few of them 
demand revenge on the whites. If Christianity fails 
with them, there may yet come a day of sorry reckon- 
ing for us. Yet no one will seek to Christianize these 
people just to save the white man’s hide, but to bring 
them into fullness of life. Christians cannot seek the 
advantage of one race at the expense of others. Chris- 
tians will seek the progress of every race at the expense 
of none. | 

“The hour is come.”—At the pass to which things 
have come we cannot hope to wait for “a more con- 
venient season” to secure racial amity. It is now or 
never, for already the world is one. Science and in- 
vention have seen to that. Our lines of communica- 
tion have gone out to all the world. You can now 
sit in your home, turn the knob on the radio, and tune 
in on another continent or two. In the near future 
the world will be still closer drawn together. The 
significant part of all this is that ideas are spreading 
with amazing rapidity. General Smuts has said that 
“the cardinal fact of geography in the twentieth cen- 
tury is the shortening of distances and the shrinking 
of the globe.” But if the world is a unit, the people 


268 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


in it have but little unity. With a world together, can 
people stay apart and survive their hates and their 
prejudices? 


THE SOLUTION OF THE PROBLEM 


Inform yourself.—It would seem to be the Christian 
thing to find out for ourselves what this talk of race 
really is all about, for the best-informed students con- 
fess that as yet little is actually known as to what 
“race’ really is. It scarcely becomes any of us to 
boast overmuch of ‘“‘race,’ for often the “inferior” 
races have ousted “superior” ones. We know, how- 
ever, that the black or the yellow man, as well as the 
white, can receive the grace, and exhibit the graces 
of Jesus Christ. The one worthy white supremacy 
is the supremacy of the white life. The Christian 
therefore insists on race-respect. Race differences are 
there; they cannot be effaced and should not be if they 
could; but race division—that must depart. Race 
cooperation must replace race-dominance; “to each 
according to his need, from each according to his 
ability.” 

Transform race relations.—Greed and _ injustice 
doubtless have entered, and do enter, into the matter 
of race-hatred. Were it not for certain economic and 
financial and political factors, it is doubtful if race 
conflicts would ever be very acute. It is racial justice, 
therefore, which the Christian must seek. All of our 
racial relations must be Christianized. “Backward 
races” are to be brought forward not merely by being 
provided with the implements for their material ad- 
vance, sanitation, and education, but by being won 
over to the mind of Christ. Professor John Dewey 
has said that “the problem of the Pacific is the trans- 
formation of the mind of China.” We too may say 


RACE 269 


that the whole problem of race is that people every- 
where shall be “transformed by the renewing of their 
minds” through Christ. 

The church may lead.—The missionary program 
of the church, which has done, and is doing, so much 
toward race understanding, is itself being recast in 
line with race respect. There is less and less attempt 
to force our customs and our forms of administration 
or of organization upon the churches of the races other 
than ours. Christians at home are becoming increas- 
ingly willing that these peoples shall embody and 
express Christianity in their own ways and by their 
own methods. It is futile for anyone now to go out 
as a missionary unless he or she has memorized by 
heart that fine verse in Second Corinthians, “‘Not that 
we have lordship over your faith, but are helpers of 
your joy.” 

“The place of understanding.”—It has been said 
that there are two classes of people—those who desire 
to dominate and those who wish to understand. Only 
the latter is Christian. Columbus felt that “the ends 
of the earth were to be brought together, and all na- 
tions and tongues united under the banners of the 
Redeemer.” This is exactly how Christians are sure 
to feel. They may practice up on this feeling in sundry 
ways at home. And they must be world-citizens. For 
us, as for William Lloyd Garrison, “Our country is 
the world, our countrymen are mankind.” 


For Discussion 


1. If you lived in a town of many nationalities, how 
would you go about it to further race-tolerance? 

2. Should a church receive members regardless of race? 

3. If you are a native-born white, resident of a city, 
would you sell your house to a black man or an 


270 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


Italian if you could get a good price, but knew 
that by doing so, you would lower the value of 
the real-estate on the block? 

4. If you were employing people belonging to what you 
consider a backward race, would you treat them the 
same as you would people of your own race? If 
not, how would you treat them? 

5. What dangers and what advantages can you see in 
“the rising tide of color”? 

6. How Christian is our country in its attitude toward 
other races? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 
Mathews, Basil, The Clash of Color. 
Conklin, Edwin Grant, The Direction of Human Evolu- 


tion. 
Oldham, J. H., Christianity and the Race Problem. 


CHAPTER XXIX 
INTERNATIONALISM 


A curious bit of law comes to us from the past. 
Six centuries ago this statute declared it to be “against 
the command of God the All-powerful, notwithstand- 
ing any custom or ordinance, to plunder the ship- 
wrecked, and all such are accursed,’ and then made 
the unique, if revolting provision that “whosoever 
should put up false lights to mislead the unwary and 
so cause the disaster, ought to be bound in the midst 
of his house and burned with it, and the whole place 
turned into a hog-yard.’”? 


BuILDING A WoRLD CONSCIENCE 


In the “good” old days.—Shipwrecked mariners 
of other nations were taken into slavery by those upon 
whose shores they were stranded, or by those who 
“rescued” them from the waves. Many, if not most, 
of the rulers insisted on “the wrecker’s right,” by 
which they might plunder and enslave any who suf- 
fered wreck. 

When laws such as the one mentioned above began 
to make their appearance kings and lords generally 
were insulted. What newfangled notion was this, that 
one had not the right to make slaves of those belong- 
ing to other nations or races, whom a considerate 
Providence had delivered into their hands? It was 
not until a few kings got a dose of their own medicine 

*Reprinted from Gesta Christi, by permission of George H. 
Doran Company, publishers. 

27% 


202 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


by suffering shipwreck themselves, and having to pay 
handsomely in order to be set free, that this theolog- 
ical explanation began to be seriously questioned. 
Even in our day nations are still to be found that 
count it neither their duty nor their privilege to 


(a9 


stretch out a loving hand 
To wrestlers with the troubled sea.” 


“The stranger within the gates” suffered similarly. 
Not even the Roman attempt to weld various peoples 
together was strong enough to make the treatment of 
aliens considerate. Until the thirteenth or fourteenth 
century a stranger became “bound to the soil’ upon 
which he had come to reside. Even the property he 
acquired passed, upon his death, not to his descend- 
ants, but to the feudal lord. Brace, years ago, pointed 
out that it took a long while before the Old Testament 
counsel, “Thou shalt not vex a stranger,” was heeded 
in Christendom. 

The church favors the square deal.—Be it said 
to the credit of the church that it bore effective wit- 
ness against such cruelty. The implications of Christ 
on this point were too clear long to escape notice. 
Christian church-counsels and rulers became increas- 
ingly aware of the inhumanity of these practices, and 
of such widespread evils as “piracy on the high seas.” 
Slowly but surely the counsel was heard and, at least 
in part, was heeded, that strangers should be treated 
hospitably, and that those who suffered from what 
was called “an act of God” had the right to their 
freedom and their goods. 

International law.—But separate edicts and treaties 
between specific nations were not enough. It became 
clear that nothing short of international legislation 
would suffice. But how to get that was, and still is, 


INTERNATIONALISM 273 


one of the greatest problems which the race has to face. 
The first really great attempt in this direction was 
made by Hugo Grotius, who, despite a dramatic and 
dangerous existence, formulated the “Rights of War 
and Peace,” the first concrete advocacy of interna- 
tional legislation. He was also the first to plead for 
“open covenants, openly derived at,’ and is justly 
known in history as “the father of international law.” 
Grotius was a devout Christian, a most enthusiastic 
lover of freedom, and an advocate of world-peace. 

Since then many noble attempts have been made to 
get the nations to live and act in obedience to law— 
not only in maritime and trade affairs but in matters 
of common concern to all mankind. John Marshall, 
Chief Justice of the United States, long years a ves- 
tryman in the Episcopal Church, rendered some of 
the most effective service yet performed in regard to 
international law. But for a thorough attempt to 
secure the codification of international law the world 
had to wait for the Declaration of Paris in 1856. 

Still much remains to be done. The story goes that 
an English jurist once dreamed that every Christian 
idea had been expunged from the law books. Then, 
as he turned to his books, he found a third of every 
page blank and the rest meaningless. The lesson of 
this story is not far to seek. If every law influenced 
by the mind and spirit of Jesus were stricken out, 
modern civilization would forthwith be destroyed. 
Contrariwise, when every law in the world has the 
stamp of Christ upon it, we may look for a per- 
manently Christian order of life. With our closely 
knit civilization and our complex commerce, both the 
laws of the world and world-laws must fully reflect 
his mind, if “life, liberty and the pursuit of hap- 
piness” are to be insured to men. 


274 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


SHOWING WoRLD-CONSIDERATENESS 


“On the throne of the world.’”—Christians are 
cosmic thinkers, They have all the world in mind. 
And they know that there is no hope for the race 
unless enough people develop an international con- 
science and an international mind. For a while it 
looked as if Protestantism would abandon such be- 
ginnings toward internationalism as other Christians 
had made. It was so individualistic, and it began so 
soon to run into national grooves, that for a time the 
outlook was not very promising. But just when 
things seemed darkest Protestantism awoke to the 
world-significance of the evangel of Christ. 

How it happened.—There had been missionaries 
before. Roman Catholic priests, not a few of them 
men of devotion and distinction, had invaded various 
parts of the world. But not until within the past cen- 
tury did the missionary impulse really grip the con- 
science of the church. A fair sample of how it hap- 
pened may be had from the life of that interesting 
cobbler-teacher-preacher, William Carey. One day as 
he was teaching geography from a leather globe which 
he himself had made, “it flashed painfully upon him 
how small a portion of the human race yet possessed 
any knowledge of Jesus Christ and his salvation.’ 
That moment, and moments like it in the careers of 
other noblemen and noblewomen of God, were 
auspicious for the human race. Upon the very day 
that France officially rejected Christianity and en- 
throned “reason” on the altars of Notre Dame, Carey 
landed in India, claiming a new continent in the name 
of Christ! 

Ministering to the world.—This deep sense of the 
race-wide responsibility of the Christian is, with in- 


INTERNATIONALISM 275 


creasing momentum, invading the Church of Christ. 
It makes great demands upon us. It means that we 
must keep ourselves informed, and that we must, in 
one way or another, go and “disciple the nations.” But 
it has its rewards, for now, as Doctor Fosdick has so 
well reminded us, “Each of us can take some of his 
own nerve and sinews reduced in wages to the form 
of money, and through money, which is a naturalized 
citizen of all lands, and which speaks all languages, 
can be at work wherever the sun shines. It is a privi- 
lege which no one knew before our modern age. It is 
one of the miracles of science, mastered by the spirit 
of service, that a man busy at his daily tasks at home 
can yet be preaching the gospel in Alaska, healing the 
sick in Korea, teaching in the schools of Persia, feed- 
ing the hungry in India, and building a new civiliza- 
tion at the headquarters of the Nile.”? Since the World 
War the churches have begun to put on world-wide 
programs commensurate with the great needs of the 
human race. 

In newness of life.-—See now what is coming to 
pass by the spirit of Christ among the nations of men. 
The church has trained many people to think in terms 
of the race. These have gone to bring, or helped to 
send, the gospel to realms afar. This has had two 
results. Many people in those nations have come to 
know and love Jesus Christ. They are sincerely and 
sacrificially trying to live in their own way “the 
Jesus way” of life. Some of them are succeeding so 
well that they are the envy of the finest of Christians 
at home. And then the people at home and the people 
abroad have, both deliberately and unconsciously, ex- 
erted influence upon their governments for more 
Christian standards in international affairs. Our in- 


*The Meaning of Service. The Abingdon Press. 


276 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


ternational love has improved and is improving our 
international law. Mazzini said that national life and 
international life should be two manifestations of the 
same principle—‘“the love of God.’ His dream stands 
a fair chance of coming true, now that nations, as 
well as individuals, are getting a world-conscience. 

Insuring success.—To make a success of inter- 
nationalism we shall have to have Christian leaders 
in state, church, and school. They shall have to think 
deeply enough to understand that not only all men but 
all parts and phases of human life are to be saved in 
the name of Christ. And we shall have to make sure 
that those who go as missionaries to other lands have 
the breadth of vision and the fineness of spirit to 
appreciate all that is Christian in the religious life 
and customs of peoples other than our own. ‘God has 
not left himself without witness anywhere,” and it 
would be strange indeed had nothing truly divine 
entered their minds and hearts. Only those great 
enough to link that good to Christ’s best will do for 
the challenging task of bringing the world into one- 
ness of spirit and of life. That this oneness shall 
always mean “unity in variety” there can be no doubt; 
yet that gives us all the more hope that real unity can 
be achieved in the world. 

While internationalism will necessarily have its 
legislations, and court, and means of mutual con- 
sultation and cooperation, the motive of good will that 
inheres in the spirit of Christ will alone suffice to 
breathe upon the dry bones of treaties and machinery, 
and to make internationalism a living thing among 
men. We are only as yet in the opening stages. At- 
tempts to rid the world of the opium and white-slave 
traffics already are under way, and efforts are being 
redoubled that “war shall be no more.” Yet such sym- 


ce i 


INTERNATIONALISM 277 


pathy as is shown in substantial measures in times of 
famine and earthquake and distress will go far toward 
pointing the nations toward a better way of life. But 
not until Christians are one and all world thinkers, 
taking to their own hearts the sin and the saving of 
the world, will the struggle for internationalism be 
won. Well may we pray devoutly the words from the 
Zend-Avesta, one of the sacred books of the East: 
“May we be such as those who bring on this great 
Renovation.” 


For Discussion 


1. Does the investment of United States capital in for- 
eign countries help to Christianize international 
relations? 

2. Has Christianity altered “diplomacy”? 

3. The late James Bryce wondered what would happen 
to a small country if it were found to contain a lot 
of radium. What would happen? 

4. Should none but Christian people be chosen as ambas- 
sadors to other lands? 

5. Must there be a World Court and a League of Nations 
in order to Christianize international relations? 

6. Does “international” finance further internationalism ? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Bryce, James, /nternational Relations. 

Merrill, William P., Christian Internationalism. 

Blakeslee, George H., The Recent Foreign Policy of the 
United States. 

Kelman, John, Some Aspects of International Christianity. 


CHAPTER XXX 
THE REALM OF GOD 


WE are now to think of the greatest dream of 
Jesus. Perhaps “dream” is not just the word to use. 
For that often suggests the impracticable. And of all 
things Jesus believed nothing more surely than that 
this dream would come true. 


ENTERING Gop’s REALM 


First in the mind of Jesus.—This dream of his 
in our day goes by various names. In the King James 
version it is called the kingdom of God. You would 
expect any translation dedicated “to the most high and 
mighty prince, James, by the grace of God, king,” to 
speak of it in that way. Since this is the version that 
has been most in use, this is the phrase that is familiar 
to most of us. But we are not as familiar with kings 
and with things kingly as people used to be. Hence 
other and better terms are coming into use. People 
now speak of the democracy of God, the government 
of heaven, the beloved community, or of the realm of 
God. This writer chances to be partial to the last 
term. So, having given the old term its due hereto- 
fore, let us for this discussion adhere to “‘the realm of 
God.” 

It is hoped that the preceding chapters have made 
clear to you that, since the life of Jesus came to the 
fore, not only his viewpoints but his views have come 
into prominence. Of these none has effected the think- 
ing and life of the church to a greater extent than the 
discovery that Christ’s hope for humanity was the 

278 


THE REALM OF GOD 279 


realm of God. Indeed, this has been the most revo- 
lutionary thing the new study of his life has disclosed. 
For years the church never suspected what Christ 
meant with it. To be sure, they used his term, but 
they did not catch his idea. Anyone who studies the 
New Testament in the light of the information con- 
cerning it which is now available is sure to see that 
the realm of God was foremost in his mind. It was 
his greatest hope, his supreme idea. He knew of no 
finer news to bring to a needy world than that “the 
realm of God is at hand.” 

A lost emphasis.—In the synoptic Gospels this 
phrase, “the realm of God,” occurs with surprising 
frequency. But in the rest of the New Testament it 
occurs surprisingly seldom. And when it does occur, 
we find that the writers generally had something else 
in mind. It was an old Jewish phrase Jesus had 
pressed into service to express his faith. But they 
failed to understand all that he had in mind, and so 
they retained more of the old Jewish idea than the one 
Christ had had. It is rarely that his actual thought 
is reproduced. Only in that strange, last book of the 
New Testament, which had such a time of it to get into 
the “canon” at all, does talk of the realm of God 
reappear with a will. It is mentioned triumphantly 
there. In all the dramatic struggle and tragedy there 
depicted, one fact stands luminously: “Of his realm 
there shall be no end.” 

How shall we account for this change of emphasis 
and meaning on the part of most of the writers of 
the New Testament? An avalanche of literature has 
appeared to account for this discrepancy. When the 
evidence is sifted down, the reason appears to be the 
one a famous student by the name of Ritschl pointed 
out years ago: “This ruling idea of Jesus failed to 


280 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


maintain itself as central in the practical interest of the 
apostles.” Back of this reason are reasons we cannot 
enumerate here, except to say that these go a long way 
toward showing that the apostles did not intentionally 
backslide from the faith. Yet the fact remains that 
they did not continue to be interested in that which 
most interested Jesus. Not until many centuries later 
—within this last century—did his followers rejoin 
him in his chief enthusiasm. It may be (we pray not) 
that it will be another century before all of his fol- 
lowers will catch the contagion of it. 

Partial views of the realm.—For to-day two mis- 
conceptions still serve to hide Christ’s meaning. One 
of these comes to us from of old, and the other is new. 
As a boy, in my home church, I frequently heard a 
fine old man offer prayer; and he invariably concluded 
by saying to God, ““When thou hast done with us here 
on earth, receive us all into thy everlasting kingdom.” 
What he did, of course, was to make the kingdom 
synonymous with heaven. He was not to blame for 
that! He was running in a well-worn groove. So 
had some of the early churchmen taught, and so had 
the church for centuries trained men to think. 

Then there is another misconception, rather popular 
just now. According to it, the realm of God is a new 
order of society, in which people will be just and fair 
in their dealings one with another, in which industry 
and all other forms of human endeavor shall be based 
on the motive of service, in which the products of in- 
dustry shall be equitably divided, and into which there 
shall be born only those equipped with clean blood, 
clear brains and normal emotions. 

The greatness of the realm.—Either of these 
views is amiss since both give but a partial portrait of 
God’s realm. It goes without saying that the realm of 


THE REALM OF GOD Se 


God includes the realm of heaven and insures the reign 
of love. God is not simply the God of this world or 
of this era. “The heaven of heavens cannot contain 
him.” The Father’s house is far roomier than this 
little earth. And it ought to be clear to all that, with 
the rule of God among men, tremendous changes will 
come. Both in heaven and in the social order the 
heavenly Father must reign. The realm of God is at 
once other-and-better-worldly. 

Yet the realm of God transcends all geographical or 
chronological ideas. Jesus said that it does not come 
“with observation’; you cannot detect its boundaries; 
no intellectual sightseeing tour will suffice to give you 
a fair idea of it. Jesus said that no one can say of 
the realm, “lo here! or lo, there!’ It is not here or 
there; it is here and there; present and future; within 
and without. It comes gradually and suddenly; some- 
times it works like yeast; then again, it is all at once 
found like a pearl of great price. Jesus went out of 
his way to make these and other points clear. What 
grievings of soul must be his to know that all these 
years people have been and are so “slow of heart to 
understand”’ ! 


ADVANCING Gop’s REALM 


The realm Godward and Godlike.—Let us here 
highly resolve that we shall never forget that the realm 
of God ts first of all a spiritual movement and that, 
only because it is this, it issues in a social one. It is 
not simply to be the realm for God, it is the realm of 
God. Jt has God back of it; at its disposal is the 
power of God’s energy. In other words, Jesus banked 
on the resources of God to bring about brotherhood. 
Those of us who justly take pride in being builders of 
the realm had best take note of this. Of all the calam- 


282 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


ities of history, which are sadder than those in which 
well-meaning people heroically hoisted the flag of 
fraternity, only to find their ship of hope stranded on 
selfishness? Jesus taught that only those in whose 
hearts “the love of God is shed abroad” have the mo- 
tive power to make a go of it. They only can be 
builders of the realm of God who find in the experience 
of God’s love at once their incentive and their power 
to make good will the program for all of life. 

A plain account of the realm.—Perhaps we will be 
helped to the meaning of the realm if we put the mat- 
ter catechism-fashion: ‘ 
1. What is the realm of God? 

That state of affairs in which all of life is brought 
into harmony with the God of Christ. Paul even 
hoped “that creation as well as man would one 
day be freed . . . and gain the glorious liberty 
of the children of God.” 

2. How important is this realm? 

Supremely important; nothing can compare with 
it in importance. Jesus said: “You must make 
his kingdom your greatest concern.” 

3. Who rules this realm? 

Our heavenly Father, who is the God and Father of 
Jesus, and whom Jesus called “Lord of heaven 
and earth.” 

4. Who belong to it? 
a. Children and the childlike. “The realm of 
God,” said Jesus, “belongs to such as these.” 
b. The spiritually-minded. “The kingdom,” 
Jesus went on to explain, “belongs to... 
those who feel their spiritual need.’ 





*The New Testament. An American Translation. Edgar J. 
Goodspeed. The University of Chicago Press, publishers, 
Chicago, Illinois. 


THE REALM OF GOD 283 


c. Any one with enough goodness to suffer for it. 
Of these too the Master spoke. “Those who 
have been persecuted for the sake of good- 
ness . . « the realm) ..\4 is theits:” 
5. Where does it begin? 

In the hearts of those who experience God. This is 
why Jesus told Nicodemus: “No one can see God’s 
realm unless he is born from above.” 

6. Who are its builders? 

Those who believe Jesus. To Peter and his disci- 
ples Jesus said, “I will give you the keys of the 
realm.” 

7. How far is it to extend? 

To all peoples, all conditions, all of life. The writer 
of the last book in the Bible saw that “of his 
realm there shall be no end.” 

8. What, then, is the first Christian duty? 

To pray “Thy reign begin” and to “hurl our lives” 
after that prayer! 

The power of his dream.—Even though this dream 
of Christ’s has not often been fully understood, enough 
of it has been grasped to put much of life in order with 
the spirit of God. It has furthered social betterment 
as nothing else has done. And now that we see more 
clearly what Jesus was aiming at, Christians by the 
thousands are persuaded that only that is in order on 
earth which is in keeping with the mind of Christ. 
They labor in the faith that human society, disorgan- 
ized as it is in many of its phases, and organized 
around self-seeking as it is in many others, can be 
made spiritual. Noteworthy experiments have been, 
and are being, carried on to introduce personal and 
business life into the realm of God. 

The challenge of the dream.—For we are not 
simply to announce the realm of God; we are to ad- 


284 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


vance it. It is becoming increasingly clear that this 
will be no child’s play! It will take all there is of us 
and in us. Here is a fair inkling of what the realm of 
God on earth (to say nothing of life beyond it) is sure 
to mean: 

1. A redeemed society, in which the spiritual shall 
be supreme. Our fathers used to have a quaint but 
significant phrase: “Entire sanctification.” That this 
phrase has been utilized by certain fanatical groups 
ought not to blind us to the message it conveys. It 
means that life as a whole must be lived in God. Well, 
it is this that Christians are after. Imperfect as they 
are, and realize themselves to be, they strive to periect 
society in the image of God. 

2. A Christian social order, in which the motive of 
service shall go ahead of the profit motive. “The serv- 
ice motive in a Christian community must include in- 
dustry. Except in some notable cases humanity as now 
constituted does not put forth its best efforts unless a 
personal reward can be gained. The church should 
have for its goal a time when pride in workmanship 
and loyalty in service will be the motives animating 
industry, and when all work will be so organized that 
these motives may be possible for all workers.” 

3. Industrial democracy, in which human values 
shall have first consideration. Until labor and manage- 
ment get as fair a share in the control of industry as 
capital now gets, industry will not be “the instrument 
for aiding men to find that abundant life for which 
Christianity stands.” 

How far are you from the Kingdom?—The 
question is how eager we are to see Christ’s dream 
come true. Some years ago a man wrote a book with 
the searching title, Dare We Still Be Christians? Well, 
when you consider what a reversal of life as we know 


THE REALM OF GOD 28s 


it now this dream of Christ will mean, dare we? Or, 
better, dare you? Since this dream has been clear, 
mighty little good can come of one’s following Jesus 
just a little way. Many, when they found out what 
Christ was really after, “walked no more with him.” 
Had you not better quit right now? For, out in the 
world of affairs, that dream of his is not exactly the 
most popular thing with which you could come along. 
You had better have a care! Here, once again, only 
heroes need apply. 


“Thy kingdom, Lord, we long for, 

Where love shall find its own; 

And brotherhood triumphant 
Our years of pride disown. 

Thy captive people languish 
In mill and mart and mine, 

We lift to thee their anguish, 
We wait thy promised sign. 


“Tf, now, perchance in tumult 

His destined sign appear— 

The rising of the people— 
Dispel our coward fear! 

Let comforts that we cherish, 
Let old traditions die! 

Our wealth, our wisdom perish, 
So that he draw but nigh.’’? 


For Discussion 


1. Would there by any poverty in the realm of God? 

2. Would natural resources be owned or controlled by 
a few? 

3. Would it be possible for any one person to accumu- 
late vast wealth in the realm of God? 





*Used by permission, from “The Church and the Hour,” by 
Vida Scudder. Copyright by E. P. Dutton & Co. 


286 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


4. How far is the social order Christian now? 

5. Is there a different standard to-day for business life 
than for professional life? Should there be? 

6. Let some member of the class report on some mod- 
ern experiments in industrial democracy. 


SUGGESTED READINGS 
Hodgkin, Henry T., The Christian Revolution, Chap. II. 
Diefendorf, Dorr F., The Christian in Social Relation- 
ships, Chap. XIII. 


a ~~ 


PART VIII 
CHRISTIANITY AT WORK IN RELIGION 


“The angels keep their ancient places— 
Turn but a stone and start a wing! 
’*Tis ye, ’tis your estranged faces, 
That miss the many-splendored thing.”’? 
—Francis Thompson. 
*Francis Thompson, “In No Strange Land,” from Collected 


Poems of Francis Thompson. Reprinted by permission of Dodd, 
Mead & Co., publishers. 





































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CHAPTER XXXI 
THE CHRISTIAN GOD 


WE have been thinking together of all that Chris- 
tianity has done, and is doing, for men. It has given 
us our greatest institution for good. It has demol- 
ished evils. It has placed a high value on life. And 
it has made life more livable. It has showered life 
with grace and glory. It has set life free: free without 
and within. And still it presses on. It is seeking to 
make social order, so that all human relations may 
reflect the spirit of Christ. 

One more thing we need to note: Christianity has 
given and is giving a deeper meaning to life. It mag- 
nifies the greatness of God and man. An English 
philosopher has said that it is as ridiculous to suppose 
that a better way will be found than Jesus’ way of 
thinking about God as to presume that something, at 
present unknown to us, will be discovered that is 
superior to love. We owe to Christianity our most 
adequate conception of God. 


THE FATHER OF Our Lorp 


Other ideas of God.—In the world into which Jesus 
came there were many conceptions of God. There are 
many now. “Gods many and lords many” could 
always be found. Monotheism—the belief that there 
is but one God—did not make very rapid headway 
among men. In this respect the Jews were ahead of 
most of the rest. We know now that over most of the 
East people thought, and still think, of Deity in terms 
of fate and fear. Elsewhere God has been regarded 


289 


290 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


chiefly from the angle of power. When the Greeks 
got ready to give up polytheism they began to inter- 
pret God in terms of substance. Their minds were 
governed by the tangible and the visible. They could 
not think of God except in terms of things. 

The Jews and God.—Over against all this came 
Jesus to talk of God in terms of character. But had 
not the Jews too spoken of God in moral terms? 
Was he not simply following in the footsteps of the 
fathers? Yes, but with a difference, and, as we see 
it now, with a world of difference. We do not know 
exactly how widespread the thought of God as a 
Father was among the Jews. That their leaders thus 
spoke of him the Old Testament attests. But they 
did not mean with it the same thing Jesus meant. That 
crude parental power which, as we have seen, Chris- 
tianity had yet to counter, was strongly in their 
thought when they spoke of fatherhood. In the pagan 
world, as has been described elsewhere, a father could 
do much as he wished with his children. He might 
even put them to death, without fear of being brought 
to account by the law. The Jews of Jesus’ day did 
not go to such extremes. But the ideas which lay back 
of these extremes persisted in modified form, in their 
minds; as, indeed, they persisted for long in Christen- 
dom. ‘These were the ideas of authority and power. 
The Jewish father had, and cherished, both of these. 
As the head of the family, he held undisputed sway. 
He expected implicit obedience. His word was law. 
When, therefore, the Jew was told that God was his 
Father he remembered at once that God’s word was 
law. The Jew saw no contradiction between a police- 
God and a Father-God. 

The God of Jesus.—But Jesus did. To the Jew, 
God was father-like; to Christ, God was fatherly. At 


THE CHRISTIAN GOD 291 


first glance this appears to be a distinction without a 
difference. For Jesus too believed in the authority 
and power of God. He never questioned either, and 
often referred to both. But Jesus did not believe these 
the facts concerning God which needed to be su- 
premely heralded. The Jews did. Upon them they 
had built their huge and stifling system of legalism. 
But legalism, of all things, was the one thing Jesus 
abhorred. Authority and power were not the things 
to be stressed about God; perfection and love were! 
Jesus turned men’s minds from the legal to the ethical 
aspects of God. 

A new emphasis.—So Jesus placed the emphasis 
on the fact that God is a loving Father. He called 
men’s attention to the importance of his character. He 
asked them to believe that God is perfect love. They 
had been extolling his power in the works of creation 
and in their national events. He told them that they 
had not looked deeply enough. He urged them to 
note God’s love. Love—that is the supreme power in 
the universe; ‘bank on that, he told them. And he was 
eager that it be known how inclusive a love this is. 
“One is your Father,” he explained. “He makes his 
sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on 
the just and the unjust.” “Are not five sparrows sold 
for two farthings?” (two fora third of acent!) “Yet 
not one of them is forgotten by God.” The perfect 
love is universal! There is no length to which this love 
will not go. A love that was willing to endure even 
the cross—it is thus that you see God’s love at its very 
best. The God of the Christian is a God who suffers 
for the sake of love! Where will you go for a deeper 
insight into God? Where find a sublimer one? 

Christ’s message about God.—Has it ever oc- 
curred to you how revolutionary a teaching about God 


292 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


this was? Scarcely anyone had ever suspected this 
about God, or if anyone had, the news had not got out. 
But he drove the point home. Read the Gospels for 
yourself and see how they bear this out. In season 
and out Jesus was saying to folks what we all have 
the right to say, “everyone, in his own tongue” : 


You may trust God! 

For He is the perfect spirit! 

He is better than our best! 

He is “powerful goodness”’! 

He is the beautiful Friend! 

The eternal energy is concerned for you! 

Yes, you do find yourself in a universe of law. 

But let not that trouble you! 

Rather, let it be cause for joy! 

For this universe of law is a friendly universe! 

God has a father’s heart! 

And his heart goes out to every one of you! 

If an earthly Father knows how to give good gifts, how 
much more your Father! 


You ought to know Him! 

For unless and until you do, you will not know what life 
really is. 

You will all your days miss the supreme Power! 

You will exist without life! 

You will exist without love! 


For God is love! 

Love is the way to God! 

Love is the life in God! 

Godless life is less than life. 
God-less love cannot “love love.” 
Love Him! 

Love Him with all your powers! 
Love Him with all your life! 
Live your life in love to Him! 


THE CHRISTIAN GOD 293 


This is the message concerning God Jesus came to 
bring. This message of his took wings. It has gone 
almost everywhere. And the day is not far distant 
when every land on earth shall have heard the good 
news Jesus brought about God. 

The persistence of his idea.—It is amazing how 
virile his gospel of God has been. You might suppose 
that theology would have put an end to it, for the 
church played havoc with Christ’s thought of God. 
It put God far away; it hid him behind his mother; 
behind “His only Son, our Lord’; behind a long 
procession of angels, apostles, martyrs, saints, inter- 
mediaries, hierarchies; it made him austere and for- 
bidding; one who had picked his favorites with zeal- 
ous care, but had little concern for the mass of the 
children of men. 

How the church could have made such caricatures 
of the Father of Jesus is beyond most of us now. Yet 
even to this day large sections of the church persist 
in doing just this. Furthermore, there has always been 
the tendency to subordinate God’s perfection and 
love to his authority and power. Yet, despite all 
this, what was said of his great Son may be said. of 
the Father: “He could not be hid.”” Men have broken 
through all the guards which the church had set up, 
and have found their way directly to the Father God. 
Hence a man could pray several centuries ago: “I am 
forced, good Father, to seek thee daily, and thou 
offerest thyself daily to be found: whensoever I seek, 
I find thee, in my house, in the fields, in the temple, 
and in the highway. Whatsoever I do, thou art with 
me; whether I eat or drink, whether I write or work, 
go to ride, read, meditate, or pray, thou art ever 
with me; wheresoever I am, or whatsoever I do, I 
feel some measure of thy mercies and love. If I be 


204 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


oppressed, thou defendest me; if I be envied, thou 
guardest me; if I hunger, thou feedest me; whatso- 
ever I want thou givest me.” Despite all handicaps 
and all perversions, Christianity has made the great- 
est contribution toward humanity's knowledge of God. 

The deepest need.—For nothing is more impor- 
tant than getting people’s conceptions of Deity 
straightened out. Bishop Quayle once said: “We must 
have a right notion about God. If we get wrong 
about God, our catastrophe is supreme. There is no 
mending it. If you get a pusillanimous God, you get 
a pusillanimous population. If you get a magnanimous 
God, you will have a magnanimous population. If 
you get a heartless God, you will have a Roman popu- 
lation. If you get a gleeful, esthetic God, you will 
have a Greek race of laughter and of song and of 
grace and death. And if you get a heart God, and a 
God of a heart, then you will get a heaven populated 
with music and laughter, and an earth populated with 
joy, and a world that is made so tender that a touch 
upon it is like the touch upon the hands of a little child. 
We must get right notions about God.” In this day, 
with many minds groping for the light, to convince a 
man of the truth of the God of Christ is to render him 
the highest possible personal service. 


THE SON OF THE FATHER 


“The Word became flesh.’—Yet Jesus went about 
this in a way most of us would not. Jesus never took 
the trouble to compose definitions of God. And he 
never even debated his existence. He just took that 
for granted. What, then, was his method? It has 
come to be known the world over by a flowery theo- 
logical word, which is, after all, more floral than 
theological: incarnation. In other words God lived 


THE CHRISTIAN GOD 295 


in him and he lived God. Nothing has ever so fur- 
thered the will of God as when Jesus came to show 
forth his character. “I have manifested thy name,” 
Jesus made boast to God. It was the proudest thing 
he was able to report. It was also the greatest. “‘Jona- 
than Edwards makes me fear and tremble,” Haw- 
thorne said, “but Jesus Christ makes me hope and 
love.” The greatest gift of Christianity was and 1s 
Jesus Christ. He 1s its supreme contribution to the 
human race. There has been but one Christ. ‘Those 
who become like him do so through him. 

“Grace and reality ours through Jesus Christ.’’— 
Because of the revelation Jesus made both of God and 
man, the New Testament writers are eager to let 
their readers know that Jesus, in a unique sense, is the 
gift of God. They seek to stress that point. They 
wish it understood that his coming into the world was 
not just an ordinary event. Hence they strain lan- 
guage and symbols to emphasize their belief that he 
came to us from above. Out of the Infinite Life and 
Love of the universe Jesus was sent to us, and was 
sent to us for the purpose of our redemption. To 
paraphrase a similar statement, had he aimed. at 
reform or civilization, he would have failed. But he 
aimed at redemption, and therefore won. This is the 
explanation the New Testament gives of Christ. This 
is the explanation which, through all these centuries, 
has been winning out in the church. 

The Saviour.—The greatest explanation of him in 
all the New Testament is that “God was in Christ.” 
And the greatest tribute paid him there is that “in him 
life lay, and this life was the Light for men.” Sil- 
vester Horne, years ago, said: “Kings and their king- 
doms, princes and their principalities, autocracies and 
democracies alike, touch the end of his conquering 


296 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


scepter in token of homage. And as the centuries 
roll on, so far from being found out, discredited, 
superseded, that part of the world which is in the van 
of civilization and education looks more and more to 
him for humanizing influences, and recognizes as the 
ultimate problem of problems how to bring its laws 
and customs and habits into captivity to the spirit and 
mind of this young Prophet Carpenter, as he seemed, 
who lived in an obscure land, and was hated and 
eventually murdered by his own countrymen, nineteen 
hundred years ago.” This is why in all ages, the same 
song goes up: 


“Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ; 
Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.” 


How about us?—Ours, then, to “show the light of 
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ.” Dying, Matthew Arnold said: “Christ came 
to reveal what righteousness really is. For nothing 
will do except righteousness; and no other conception 
of righteousness will do except Christ’s conception of 
it—his method and secret.” . 


“Hath he marks to lead me to him, 
If he be my guide? 
‘In his feet and hands are wound-prints, 
And his side.’ 


“Tf I find him, if I follow, 
What his guerdon here? 
‘Many a sorrow, many a labor, 

Many a tear.’ 


“Tf I still hold closely to him, 
What hath he at last? 
‘Sorrow vanquished, labor ended, 
Jordan passed.’ 


THE CHRISTIAN GOD 207 


“If I ask him to receive me, 
Will he say me nay? 
‘Not till earth and not till heaven 
Pass away.’ 


“Finding, following, keeping, struggling, 
Is he sure to bless? 
‘Saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs, 
‘Answer, “Yes.”’ ” 


For Discussion 


1. It is said that there are “ten thousand definitions of 
God.” Have you one? Give it. 

2. Can we hope to get a perfect definition of God? Do 
we need one? What do we need? 

3. Is the Christian God personal? If so, why? 

4. What is the difference between the Mohammedan 
Allah and the God of our Lord? 

5. What must a man believe about Jesus in order to 
become a Christian? 

6. What does it mean to “come to Jesus”? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Brown, Charles R., Why I Believe in Religion, Chap. I. 
Abbott, Lyman, What Christianity Means to Me, Chap. 
VII 


Rall, Harris Franklin, The Meaning of God. 


CHAPTER XXXII 
FAITH 


In this closing chapter, let us face man’s greatest 
need—confidence. When the author of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews expressed his conviction that “without 
faith it is impossible to please God,” he did not over- 
state matters. Without faith one can neither give 
satisfaction to life nor get satisfaction from it. Faith 
is needed most of all. If Christianity is to succeed, 
we must be men and women of faith. 


TRUSTFULNESS 


Faith in life.—People need confidence in the worth- 
whileness of life. Those of us who are young do not 
readily realize how urgent a need this is. To us the 
question, Is life worth while? has not come very in- 
sistently. “The wild joys of living” are ours; to many 
of us “to be young is very heaven.” We feel that it 
is good for us to be here. But when we lose someone 
we love, or some other solemn experience comes to us, 
that question is likely to rush in upon us with terrible 
urgency. We do well to remember that many youths 
face this question all the time. It stalks before them, 
with grim and sinister aspects, by day and by night. 
What is there worth while about life that has to be 
lived in constant poverty or disease or dread? We 
had better confess that life as some folks have to 
live it is not very much worth while! ° Yet, even in 
their case, we can do no better than to save, or to fur- 
ther, their confidence in life. It is a great event in 

298 


FAITH 299 


the life of any man when he comes to understand that 
“the most ingenious hope is nearer truth than the most 
rational despair.” 

Your importance.—To make people confident that 
their lives are worth while, we shall have to convince 
them that their lives are consequential; that they mat- 
ter; matter in themselves to the race and to God. 
They must be given the vision which made Jesus as- 
sert: “Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not 
yet appear what we shall be; but we know that... 
we shall be.’ Bulwer Lytton once wrote a story of a 
man who lived for years with the sense that he was 
an onlooker, not a participant in life. No greater 
moment can come to a man than that in which he real- 
izes that he is in the swim of life; that he is of con- 
sequence im the universe and to it. An old weaver 
became known for the prayer he used to pray, ““O God, 
help me to hold a high opinion of myself.” It is a 
prayer we must help people to answer. For only this 
makes life bearable. There is so much to thwart man’s 
fondest hopes and aims. We need the steadying con- 
fidence that progress is possible in this process we call 
life. | 

A good deal that is in us yet remains to be brought 
out. It was said concerning Jesus that ‘he knew what 
was in man.” Not many of us can lay claim to so 
enviable a knowledge. Rather, like Maeterlinck, “‘we 
live so far from ourselves that we are ignorant of 
nearly everything that occurs at the horizon of our 
being.” The discovery of ourselves, what an enter- 
prise that is! Alfred Russel Wallace, after years of 
scientific study, arrived at the conclusion that “the 
supreme end and purpose of this vast universe was the 
production of the living soul in the perishable body of 
man.’ Maybe the New Testament writer had just 


300 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


this in mind when he suggested that the whole creation 
waits for the revealing of the sons of God. At all 
events, it is some such confidence in life as these men 
had that must be imparted to people everywhere. 
Christianity must say to them, in the name and phrase 
of its Founder, “I came that ye might have life, and 
that ye might have it more.” 

Faithful to the end.—It is in this confidence that 
people must come to face the middle years of life and 
then to confront age. The question, Is life worth 
while? takes on proportions for those who reach mid- 
dle life. By this time they know—or think they know 
—disillusionment. Some of their deepest hopes have 
gone for naught; they have discovered within them- 
selves limitations which in youth they did not even sus- 
pect. The edge of their spirit of adventure has worn 
off; they go through with life rather than up through 
it. Hence “the pestilence that walketh at noonday” is 
likely to consist of the cynicism often expressed in 
the query, “What's the use?’ Well may they pray 
the biblical petition, “O Lord, revive thy work in the 
midst of the years,’ for at this stage of life, confi- 
dence in life’s worth-whileness easily departs. Happy 
he who in youth has laid such enduring foundations 
that nothing that happens “in the midst of the years” 
can undermine his faith. More happy he who, in the 
face of approaching age, can meet the world with the 
song Browning made immortal: 


“Grow old along with me! 
The best is yet to be, 
The last of life, for which the first was made: 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith ‘A whole I planned, 
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be 
afraid!” 


FAITH 301 


And Christianity has always asserted “‘that life shall 
endless be.” It has been said that before Christ came 
men made their tombs face the west, for the soul’s 
sun had set. But after Christ, tombs faced the East, 
the place of light. Bunyan, in The Pilgrim’s Progress, 
summed up the question when into the mouth of Chris- 
tian he put these words: “Then I must venture. To 
go back is nothing but death, to go forward is fear 
of death—and everlasting life beyond it. I will yet 
go forward!’ Besides, anyone who has entered into 
fellowship with Christ will stand ready to say: 


“Ah, Christ, if there were no hereafter, 
It still were best to follow thee.” 


‘THE CHRISTIAN TRUST 


Faith in God.—To say that people need confidence 
in life is but another way of saying that they need to 
perceive that life is spiritual. When destruction swept 
down upon Pompeii, a sentinel stationed at a corner 
stood to his post. Centuries later they found him 
there. He had not moved; his spear was still in his 
hand! But at the outer gates of the city, among many 
others, they found a woman, desperately clutching her 
jewels in her hand. To the one, duty was foremost; 
the other was chiefly concerned for the things which 
she possessed. Here is an ancient example of two 
prevailing viewpoints. The one stands for the spirit- 
ual, the other for the materialistic outlook upon life. 
Christianity, as we have seen, stands for God. Al- 
luding to him, the ancient poet says: “Thou art the 
confidence of the ends of all the earth and of them that 
are afar off on the sea.” As a matter of fact, how- 
ever, multitudes lack confidence in him. They suffer 
from unfair representations of him. The Father of 


302 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


our Lord Jesus Christ needs to be proclaimed. One 
task confronting Christians to-day is that of awaken- 
ing people to the meaning and presence of the Chris- 
tian God. Much heroic work is now being done in 
this field, but much more of it needs to be done. Jesus 
said that people can glorify the Father when the lights 
of our lives shine. 

Faith in Jesus Christ.—Carlyle, passing the image 
of Christ on one of his pessimistic days, said: “Ah, 
poor fellow, your part is played out.” It sometimes 
seems that way. And to many people it always seems 
that way. In our pessimistic moods, it is easy to 
gather evidence that the world as yet has but little use 
for the real Jesus. To Christians, however, this is the 
more a spur toward revealing him to men, for they 
are convinced that if people only had implicit con- 
fidence in Jesus Christ, a better day would come. The 
world has all along suffered from a partial trust in 
Christ. All too long has he been regarded as a beau- 
tiful and benign character, gracious and gentle, whose 
teachings were beautiful, but who was not really in- 
tended of God to put all of life into subjection to good 
will. 

This has been the besetting sin of the church. He 
has been rejected by the very people by whom he was 
respected. Much of this is due to the fact that but 
few have, at any time, really understood him. We, at 
least, find ourselves in an age in which we are con- 
stantly urged to go back to Jesus that we may go for- 
ward with him! But this only increases our respon- 
sibility. The world must be taught to know the actual 
meaning of Jesus: the significance of his life, the im- 
port of his teachings, the importance of his death and 
“the power of his resurrection.” Lest we forget, let 
us hasten to note that “the world” is your world first 


FAITH 303 


of all: the circle in which you move, the realm where 
your influence tells. It is this world that stands in im- 
mediate need of confidence in Jesus Christ. 

We must take Jesus seriously. One searches in vain 
for some new way of putting this old truth. It has all 
been said so often; how is it we give it no heed? 
There must come upon us a sort of divine recklessness. 
“Attempt great things for God; expect great things 
from God.” We must wager our lives on him. 
“You're a socialist,” sneered an angry official at a 
young clergyman. “No,” replied the preacher calmly, 
“T am far more radical than that; I am a Christian!” 
We shall have to be willing to risk our lives, our in- 
stitutions, our constitutions, our social order, even our 
comforts, if we really care to give people confidence in 
Jesus Christ. We are accountable for our time, our 
talents, and our opportunity. Thomas a Kempis said, 
“Vanity it is, to wish to live long, and to be careless 
to live well.” 

Faith in Christianity.—For, in the long run, folks 
are not going to have confidence in Christianity until a 
great many people ardently practice it. As things 
stand, faith in Christianity must, in many quarters, 
not only be created, but restored, for that which has 
gone by its name has been but a poor ghost of its 
real self. “People,” said Samuel Butler, “are equally 
horrified at hearing Christianity doubted, and at see- 
ing it practiced.” Faith in Christianity must mean 
life risked on it and civilization ventured for it. 


THE Victorious LIFE 


Christlikeness.—So it all comes down to what you 
and I really are. There are two ways in which people 
try to be Christian. The one way is chiefly external. 
People try to copy Christ. They put Christ on an 


304 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


easel and then, laboriously, copy him line after line. 
“T find,’ wrote John Wesley in his Journal, three days 
after his heart had been strangely warmed, “‘that all 
my strength lies in keeping my eyes fixed upon Jesus.” 
This effort is immensely worth while. But one who 
sets out to do this had better recognize that he has 
set himself to no simple task. Jesus is not easily 
copied. You go infor a large contract when you at- 
tempt to imitate what Lyman Abbott well described 
as “that strange life and that extraordinary character 
with its glorious but puzzling contradictions: cour- 
ageous but never combative; gentle but never timid; 
masterful but never self-assertive; simple in taste 
but never ascetic; sympathetic with all men but com- 
promising with none; rejoicing in activity yet seeking 
solitude; pure in heart yet friend of sinners; patient 
with wrongs to himself but indignant with wrongs to 
others; vanquishing a mob by the magic of his pres- 
ence, yet yielding himself up without resistance to the 
legalized force of an unjust government.”* ‘Tennyson 
similarly felt that amazing greatness of his: 
“Thou seemest human and divine; 
The highest, holiest manhood, thou; 
Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.” 


Christliness. —The other way in which people strive 
to be Christian is chiefly internal. They seek for the 
spirit of Jesus. Theology has used ponderous phrases 
to tell men that they can best attain Christlikeness 
through Christliness. Now we do not simply trace his 
deeds and try to copy them; now we get his spirit and 
the mind that was in him. Many a creedal article that 
to you sounds merely like a bundle of disjointed words, 


*Lyman Abbott, What Christianity Means to Me. Reprinted 
by permission of The Macmillan Company. 


FAITH 305, 


and that in reality simply succeeds in concealing 
thought, was intended to express the truth that the 
one way to imitate Christ is to incarnate him; to be, 
as Bishop Brooks used to put it, ourselves Jesus 
Christs. The world is not going to get confidence in 
Jesus, in the Father of Jesus, in the Spirit of Jesus, 
in the way of Jesus, until there are in it a great many 
“living epistles,’ who reach the Christianity they 
preach. There is a story to the effect that, on his first 
visit to America Ole Bull, the violinist, encountered 
considerable opposition on the part of the violinists 
here. James Gordon Bennett offered the Norwegian 
the columns of his paper that he might reply to his 
critics. “I tink,” said Ole Bull, in his broken English, 
“it is best tey writes against me, and I plays against 
tem.” Many of us must be ablé to play our religion 
so well that all criticism of Christianity shall go for 
naught. 

A parting thought.—Christianity has been at work. 
It is at work now. It needs you. But you can only 
work it if it is at work in you. One of the greatest 
leaders of American thought used to go about telling 
the story of what great men had seen in Jesus Christ. 
He would say to the people who gathered to listen to 
him: “Consider the men whom Christ has mastered, 
and then consider another thing: Why has he not mas- 
tered you?” The New Testament deems that life a 
success which is “worthy to stand before the Son of 


» 


man.” Are you worthy? 
“Who answers Christ’s insistent call 
Must give himself, his life, his all, 
Without one backward look. 
Who sets his hand unto the plow 
And glances back with anxious brow, 
His calling hath mistook. 


306 CHRISTIANITY AT WORK 


Christ claims him wholly for his own 
He must be Christ’s, and Christ’s alone.”’? 


For Discussion 


1. Are “the faith’ and “the way” synonymous in the 
thinking of the church? Could they be? How? 

2. Should we pray for faith or should we pray in faith? 

3. There is said to be “more faith in honest doubt .. . 
than in half the creeds.” ‘What does this statement 
mean? 

4. What is the difference between faith and credulity? 
Do some religious bodies confuse the two? 

5. Is conceit confidence? 

6. How has Jesus aided faith in immortality ? 


SUGGESTED READINGS 


Fosdick, Harry Emerson, The Meaning of Faith. 

Jones, Rufus W., Spiritual Energies. 

Versteeg, John M., Christ and the Problems of Youth, 
Chap. VI. 


* Hearts Courageous, “Follow Me,” John Oxenham, The 
Abingdon Press. 





BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Bowran, J. G., Christianity and Culture. 

Brace, C. L., Gesta Christt. 

Brown, W. A., Impertalistic Religion and the Religion of 
Democracy. 

Carlyle, A. J., The Christian Church and Liberty. 

Cross, George, Creative Christianity. 

Cunningham, William, Christianity and Soctal Questions. 

Dennis, J. F., Christian Missions and Social Progress. 

Dickey, Samuel, The Constructive Revolution of Jesus. 

Drown, E. S., The Creative Christ. 

Earp, E. L., Social Aspects of Religious Institutions. 

Foakes-Jackson, F. J., Studies in the Life of the Early 
Church. 

Gardner, C. S., The Ethics of Jesus and Social Progress. 

Glover, T. R., Jesus in the Experience of Men. 

Hillis, N. D., The Influence of Christ in Modern Life. 

Hodgkin, H. T., The Christian Revolution. 

Hough, L. H., Synthetic Christianity. 

Lewis, Edwin, Jesus Christ and the Human Quest. 

Lofthouse, W. F., Altar, Cross and Commumity. 

Macfarland, C. S., International Christian Movements. 

McConnell, F. J., Democratic Christianity. 

McGlothlin, W. J., The Course of Christian History. 
Moore, E. C., The Spread of Christianity in the Modern 
W orld. | 

Mozley, J. K., The Achievements of Christianity. 

Shaw, C. G., Christianity and Modern Culture. 

Spencer, Malcolm, Work, Play, and the Gospel. 

Stead, F. H., The Story of Social Christianity. 

Walker, Williston, A History of the Christian Church. 


307 


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